Download or read book Overdiagnosed written by H. Gilbert Welch and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2011-01-18 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exposé on Big Pharma and the American healthcare system’s zeal for excessive medical testing, from a nationally recognized expert More screening doesn’t lead to better health—but can turn healthy people into patients. Going against the conventional wisdom reinforced by the medical establishment and Big Pharma that more screening is the best preventative medicine, Dr. Gilbert Welch builds a compelling counterargument that what we need are fewer, not more, diagnoses. Documenting the excesses of American medical practice that labels far too many of us as sick, Welch examines the social, ethical, and economic ramifications of a health-care system that unnecessarily diagnoses and treats patients, most of whom will not benefit from treatment, might be harmed by it, and would arguably be better off without screening. Drawing on 25 years of medical practice and research on the effects of medical testing, Welch explains in a straightforward, jargon-free style how the cutoffs for treating a person with “abnormal” test results have been drastically lowered just when technological advances have allowed us to see more and more “abnormalities,” many of which will pose fewer health complications than the procedures that ostensibly cure them. Citing studies that show that 10% of 2,000 healthy people were found to have had silent strokes, and that well over half of men over age sixty have traces of prostate cancer but no impairment, Welch reveals overdiagnosis to be rampant for numerous conditions and diseases, including diabetes, high cholesterol, osteoporosis, gallstones, abdominal aortic aneuryisms, blood clots, as well as skin, prostate, breast, and lung cancers. With genetic and prenatal screening now common, patients are being diagnosed not with disease but with “pre-disease” or for being at “high risk” of developing disease. Revealing the economic and medical forces that contribute to overdiagnosis, Welch makes a reasoned call for change that would save us from countless unneeded surgeries, excessive worry, and exorbitant costs, all while maintaining a balanced view of both the potential benefits and harms of diagnosis. Drawing on data, clinical studies, and anecdotes from his own practice, Welch builds a solid, accessible case against the belief that more screening always improves health care.

Download or read book Violence in Pursuit of Health written by Landon Kuester and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a unique examination of how violence is situationally induced and reproduced for those inmates living with HIV in a US State prison system. Imprisonment is the only space where Americans have a constitutional right to healthcare but findings from this research suggest that accessing this care and associated welfare benefits requires some degree of violence. This book documents how HIV-positive inmates went about achieving agency through harm to their bodies and social standing to improve their health and wellbeing, in prison and upon re-entry to the community. It focusses on ethnographic research which was carried out in seven penal facilities in New England and comprises of accounts from inmates, prison staff, healthcare providers, ex-offenders, and community social workers. This book speaks to academics interested in prisons, violence, health, and ethnographic research, and to policy makers.

Download or read book Life Without Disease written by William B. Schwartz and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A jarring vision of a medical utopia--drawing on the last half-century of medical advancement during which genetic intervention has taken a greater role in the prevention of disease.

Download or read book In Pursuit of Healthy Environments written by Esa Ruuskanen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-12 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Pursuit of Healthy Environments brings temporal depth to a highly topical issue, the interaction between health and the environment. By means of a rich set of historical case studies from Americas to Europe and from the tropics to the Arctic, the volume demonstrates that the concern for creating and finding healthy environments is not a new one, shows how the link between the environment and health has been perceived at different times and in different cultures, and discusses the practical implications of these conceptualizations. The book written by scholars from architecture, cultural anthropology, history, Indigenous Studies, media studies and sociology will be of interest to a reader interested in the historical roots of present health-related environmental issues. It discusses the spatiality and materiality of the conceptions of health and the practices of nurture in colonial and post-colonial environments and shows how greatly indigenous and colonial mindsets have differed during the last 300 years. It also investigates how certain environments have become labelled as healthy and life-preserving while others stigmatized by death and disease and how fluctuating these notions can be. Finally, it analyses the materialities and immaterialities, as well as the transgenerational and transboundary characters of environmental and medical knowledge.

Download or read book Inner Hygiene written by James C. Whorton and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book will have strong appeal to historians of medicine, American and European historians with an interest in health and popular culture, physicians and other health professionals, and laypersons concerned about diet and health."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Forgotten Healers written by Sharon T. Strocchia and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-17 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Margaret W. Rossiter History of Women in Science Prize A new history uncovers the crucial role women played in the great transformations of medical science and health care that accompanied the Italian Renaissance. In Renaissance Italy women played a more central role in providing health care than historians have thus far acknowledged. Women from all walks of life—from household caregivers and nurses to nuns working as apothecaries—drove the Italian medical economy. In convent pharmacies, pox hospitals, girls’ shelters, and homes, women were practitioners and purveyors of knowledge about health and healing, making significant contributions to early modern medicine. Sharon Strocchia offers a wealth of new evidence about how illness was diagnosed and treated, whether by noblewomen living at court or poor nurses living in hospitals. She finds that women expanded on their roles as health care providers by participating in empirical work and the development of scientific knowledge. Nuns, in particular, were among the most prominent manufacturers and vendors of pharmaceutical products. Their experiments with materials and techniques added greatly to the era’s understanding of medical care. Thanks to their excellence in medicine urban Italian women had greater access to commerce than perhaps any other women in Europe. Forgotten Healers provides a more accurate picture of the pursuit of health in Renaissance Italy. More broadly, by emphasizing that the frontlines of medical care are often found in the household and other spaces thought of as female, Strocchia encourages us to rethink the history of medicine.

Download or read book Transforming Health Care written by Charles Kenney and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2010-11-08 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades, the manufacturing industry has employed the Toyota Production System the most powerful production method in the world to reduce waste, improve quality, reduce defects and increase worker productivity. In 2001, Virginia Mason Medical Center, an integrated healthcare delivery system in Seattle, Washington set out to achieve its compe

Download or read book Adventures of a Female Medical Detective written by Mary Guinan and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Occasionally heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious, Guinan's account of her pathbreaking career will inspire public health students and future medical detectives—and give all readers insight into that part of the government exclusively devoted to protecting their health.

Download or read book Health Happiness and the Pursuit of Herbs written by Adele Godchaux Dawson and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Wholiness written by Dr James Francis Schroeder and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2015-12-08 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Very often we find ourselves struggling and disconnected from the person who we are called to be. We go looking for solutions in different places, only to find that sustained progress and growth does not seem to come. Meanwhile, as our lives seem more compartmentalized and arranged, we slowly begin to slip away from the holistic existence that all of us desire. We seek happiness in circumstances that don't endure, and settle for superficiality that does little more than get us through our day. But deep inside of us, a yearning remains-one that desires to deeply embrace our physical, psychological, social, and spiritual dimensions in raw form as one being. And right through the heart of it runs this curious story of Christianity, as radical now as it was two thousand years ago. Although encounters with this yearning may be brief and uncertain, denying its presence only leaves us further confused. So we settle for less, and linger unfulfilled. Wholiness is a book dedicated to a deeper understanding of this reality. Through restless seeking, it strives to bring together collective wisdom and authentic experiences in a way that engages the reader in the questions of, "Just who are we?" and "Where do we want to go?"

Download or read book Death Investigation in America written by Jeffrey M Jentzen and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-02-15 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why is the American system of death investigation so inconsistent and inadequate? In this unique political and cultural history, Jeffrey Jentzen draws on archives, interviews, and his own career as a medical examiner to look at the way that a long-standing professional and political rivalry controls public medical knowledge and public health.

Download or read book No Time to Lose A Life in Pursuit of Deadly Viruses written by Peter Piot and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2012-05-28 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of a microbiologist's remarkable career, from identifying the Ebolavirus to pioneering AIDS research and policy.

Download or read book Fighting for Life written by S. Josephine Baker and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2013-09-24 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An “engaging and . . . thought-provoking” memoir of battling public health crises in early 20th-century New York City—from the pioneering female physician and children’s health advocate who ‘caught’ Typhoid Mary (The New York Times) New York’s Lower East Side was said to be the most densely populated square mile on earth in the 1890s. Health inspectors called the neighborhood “the suicide ward.” Diarrhea epidemics raged each summer, killing thousands of children. Sweatshop babies with smallpox and typhus dozed in garment heaps destined for fashionable shops. Desperate mothers paced the streets to soothe their feverish children and white mourning cloths hung from every building. A third of the children living there died before their fifth birthday. By 1911, the child death rate had fallen sharply and The New York Times hailed the city as the healthiest on earth. In this witty and highly personal autobiography, public health crusader Dr. S. Josephine Baker explains how this transformation was achieved. By the time she retired in 1923, Baker was famous worldwide for saving the lives of 90,000 children. The programs she developed, many still in use today, have saved the lives of millions more. She fought for women’s suffrage, toured Russia in the 1930s, and captured “Typhoid” Mary Mallon, twice. She was also an astute observer of her times, and Fighting for Life is one of the most honest, compassionate memoirs of American medicine ever written.

Download or read book In Pursuit of the Quality of Life written by Avner Offer and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1996 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is wealth the same as happiness? How is the quality of life to be evaluated, measured, and most importantly, achieved? The authors provide provocative and engaging answers to these questions in this new, multidisciplinary and pragmatic approach to an important area of social research. Taking the individual as the point of departure, the authors consider both objective circumstances and their subjective impact on people's lives. Prominent authors from an array of different academic disciplines discuss the quality of life as viewed from their distinctive perspectives: these include the psychology of subjective well-being, destitution and basic needs, the environment, women and the family, illness and health, employment and work, and the role of the state.

Download or read book Communities in Action written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2017-04-27 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Download or read book In Pursuit of India written by and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gathers photographs of the Indian people and their daily life. This book reveals the path of an outsider determined to overcome all emotional and cultural obstacles in a bid to become an insider. Provides an emphatic insight into the true Indian experience, stripped of mystical and picturesque overlays.

Download or read book In Pursuit of Health and Longevity written by Cal Samra and published by Robert Reed Publishers. This book was released on 2018 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the past 34 years, best-selling author Cal Samra, age 87, has been the editor of a national humor newsletter called The Joyful Noiseletterdirected mainly to churches and health professionals. Health, physical fitness, and longevity have been the author's longstanding interests during his years as an Associated Press and newspaper reporter, and as the lay executive director of the Huxley Institute for Biosocial Research, a medical research foundation. But he says he owes his health and longevity to the teachings of the many health pioneers, from long-ago centuries to the present, who are featured in this book. For the book, this award-winning health and humor historian researched and treaded into the history and teachings of many health pioneers down through the centuries: religious figures of all faith traditions, medical doctors, nurses, health professionals, counselors, agnostic philosophers, bodybuilders, professional athletes, dietitians, and nutritionists, and rediscovered their admonitions on health and longevity which have long since been forgotten or ignored. Starting with the Hebrew prophet Daniel (circa 620 B.C.), he then proceeded down through the centuries to Jesus, the third-century Greek physicians, the Franciscans, John Wesley, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ellen White, Sojourner Truth, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the Hindu Swami Vivekanada, Teddy Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, Catherine Doherty, Linus Pauling, Jack LaLanne, Dr. Donald L. Cooper, M.D., Dr. Rex Russell, M.D., Patch Adams, M.D., Dr. Mehmet Oz, M.D., Etta Dale Hornsteiner, professional athletes like Tom Brady, and Serena and Venus Williams, Bob Hope, and many others. All of them were extraordinary men and women from numerous faith and philosophical traditions. They were Jewish, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, Moslem, and agnostic, African-Americans, Native Americans, and Mexican Americans. Many were immigrants or the children of immigrants. Some were conservatives and some were liberals, but they all had a zest for life and a meeting of minds on living a healthy lifestyle. It is amazing how much they agreed upon. Many of these men and women regarded themselves, or were regarded, as health reformers. Their basic advice on living a healthy lifestyle was generally the same: eat fresh, natural, nutritional foods in moderation, exercise your body regularly, get sufficient sleep, keep your faith and your sense of humor, and strive to be a loving, caring, giving and forgiving person. The focus of all these health reformers was living a healthy lifestyle. Many of these health pioneers were ignorant of the work and views of their predecessors, or chose to ignore them. It is altogether human to be reluctant to give credit to individuals outside one's own faith or philosophical tradition. But ironically, some of the research of modern science is confirming the views of these prophetic health pioneers. This book is the first book to attempt to trace the history of health pioneers, both religious and secular, down through the centuries, and to introduce them to readers. It is indexed and designed to be a resource book for medical doctors, nurses, chaplains, pastors, counselors, nutritionists, physical therapists, body-buildings, editors, comedians, clowns and anyone wishing to live a healthier and longer life. Samra pleads with religious organizations to pay more attention to the pollution of our air, water, and food supply, which is eroding the health of people and congregations. "While you are teaching people how to get to Heaven, how about teaching them healthy lifestyles to survive on this earth?" he asks. Several of the cartoons from The Joyful Noiseletter have been reprinted in this book.