Disease-Mongers: How Doctors, Drug Companies, and Insurers Are Making You Feel Sick

As diseases like "obesity" proliferate and as medical technologies detect more and more (often innocent) anomalies which are then frequently overtreated, Lynn Payer's fine, insightful, and entertaining book is more worthwhile and apropos than ever.She offers an early example of the romance with technology and overestimation of its benefits when citing the French novel "Dr. Knock", when a modern marvel of a doctor moves into a French village of the early 1900s with the latest technology, a thermometer. He soon has all its denizens overconcerned with the arthritis they formerly handled routinely while measuring their temperature fluctuations daily and obsessing about them. I would also recommend Gilbert Welch's fine and up-to-date book, "Should I Be Tested for Cancer? Maybe Not and Here's Why". The suffering caused by overtesting and overtreatment is not trivial. Cheers to those who examine and balance costs and benefits of culturally-prescribed medical norms.

When I see repeated TV ads telling me to 'ask my doctor about.....' I always wondered if there was a 'working relation' between the doctors and the pharmaceutical companies. When I see repeated studies that indicate doctors which have a financial interest in laboratory testing clinics or equipment, recommend more testing be done on their patients, I always wondered if there was a conflict of interest. And finally, when I see doctors going off to a 'conference' in Hawaii, etc to be courted and ego-stroked by the the pharmaceuticals, after which they return and claim a tax deduction, I wonder just where the patient fits into the over-all scheme of things. Thanks to this book, and based upon actual facts and data, I now know the answers to many of my questions.

We all know that medical care is expensive, tests are expensive, drugs are expensive, and that many people stand to profit from our current high-tech, drug-oriented medical treatments, but how many of us stop to consider what distortions this causes in the medical care that is offered to us? Ms. Payer helps us see some of the biases that are inherent in our medical system. Her books deserve a much broader audience. (Her previous book, _Medicine and Culture_ is also a 5-star book, IMO.) Should be "must" reading for all consumers of health care.