In the same period it also produced treatments to control the progress of Parkinson's, rheumatoid arthritis, and schizophrenia. It made realities of open-heart surgery, organ transplants, test-tube babies. Unquestionably, the medical accomplishments of the postwar years stand at the forefront of human endeavor, yet progress in recent decades has slowed nearly to a halt. In this winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, medical doctor and columnist James Le Fanu both surveys the glories of medicine in the postwar years and analyzes the factors that for the past twenty-five years have increasingly widened the gulf between achievement and advancement: the social theories of medicine, ethical issues, and political debates over health care that have hobbled the development of vaccines and discovery of new "miracle" cures. While fully demonstrating the extraordinary progress effected by medical research in the latter half of the twentieth century, Le Fanu also identifies the perils that confront medicine in the twenty-first. 16 pages of black-and-white photographs add to what the Los Angeles Times cited as "a sobering, contrarian challenge" to the "nostrum of medicine as a never-ending font of ‘miracle cures'." "[From] a respected science writer ... important information that ... has been overlooked or ignored by many physicians." —New Republic "Provocative and engrossing and informative." —Houston Chronicle "Marvelously written, meticulously researched ... one of the most thought-provoking and important works to appear in recent years." —Choice

    A bit of medical gallows humor, this simile illustrates the difficulties of finding signals (the snowball) against a background of noise (the blizzard). Doctors are faced with similar difficulties every day when sifting through piles of data from blood tests to X-rays to endless lists of patient symptoms. Diagnoses are often just educated guesses, and prognoses less certain still. There is a significant amount of uncertainty in the daily practice of medicine, resulting in confusion and potentially deadly complications. Dr. Steven Hatch argues that instead of ignoring this uncertainty, we should embrace it. By digging deeply into a number of rancorous controversies, from breast cancer screening to blood pressure management, Hatch shows us how medicine can fail--sometimes spectacularly--when patients and doctors alike place too much faith in modern medical technology. The key to good health might lie in the ability to recognize the hype created by so many medical reports, sense when to push a physician for more testing, or resist a physician's enthusiasm when unnecessary tests or treatments are being offered. Both humbling and empowering, Snowball in a Blizzard lays bare the inescapable murkiness that permeates the theory and practice of modern medicine. Essential reading for physicians and patients alike, this book shows how, by recognizing rather than denying that uncertainty, we can all make better health decisions.

    For no apparent reason, she's singled out from her siblings, blamed for her family's problems and targeted for unspeakable abuse. The loving environment she's come to know becomes an endless nightmare of twisted punishments as she's forced to confront the dark cruelty lurking inside the mother she idolizes. Based on a true story, Call Me Tuesday recounts, with raw emotion, a young girl's physical and mental torment at the mercy of the monster in her mother's clothes--a monster she doesn't know how to stop loving. Tuesday's painful journey through the hidden horrors of child abuse will open your eyes, and her unshakable love for her parents will tug at your heartstrings.

    But getting here has not been a simple story of selfless men working tirelessly in the pursuit of medical advancement. Instead it's a bloodstained tale of blunders, arrogance, mishap and murder. In trying to keep us alive, surgeons have all too often killed us off, and life-saving solutions have often come from the most surprising places. Accompanying a major BBC series, "Blood and Guts" is an incredible story of stolen corpses, medical fraud, lobotomized patients - and every now and then courageous advances that have saved the lives of millions around the world. You may think twice before going under the knife.

    

    A lyrical journey from hope to despair and back again, The First Cell explores cancer from every angle: medical, scientific, cultural, and personal. Indeed, Raza describes how she bore the terrible burden of being her own husband's oncologist as he succumbed to leukemia. Like When Breath Becomes Air, The First Cell is no ordinary book of medicine, but a book of wisdom and grace by an author who has devoted her life to making the unbearable easier to bear.

    Morticians bury their mistakes. A twenty-three-year veteran of emergency medical services, paramedic Matthew Sias took a detour in his career to pursue the death care business and found a complementarity between two seemingly divergent careers. Silent Siren: Memoirs of a Life Saving Mortician, is the record of some of the more memorable calls he has responded to through the years. Often intense, at times gruesome, and frequently humorous, this memoir takes you from the back seat of the medic unit racing to the hospital with a trauma patient, to the brightly lit embalming room of a funeral home, and everywhere in between. Having the ability to calmly assist a person in crisis is, perhaps, one of life’s most awesome privileges.

    This short and accessible introduction provides an invaluable tool with which to think about the ethical values that lie at the heart of medicine.Tony Hope deals with thorny moral issues, including euthanasia and the morality of killing. He also explores political questions, such as how we can make sure health care resources are distributed fairly. Each chapter in the book considers a different issue, for example, genetics, modern reproductive technologies, resource allocation, mental health, and medical research. Each section also discusses controversial questions such as: Who should have access to reproductive technology? Is it right to fund expensive drug treatment for individuals? Should treatment for mental illness be imposed on patients without their consent? Considering a wide range of questions of medical ethics, this Very Short Introduction will help to explain some of the confusing issues facing the field of medicine today.About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

    Beginning with his family’s odyssey, In a Different Key tells the extraordinary story of this often misunderstood condition, and of the civil rights battles waged by the families of those who have it. Unfolding over decades, it is a beautifully rendered history of ordinary people determined to secure a place in the world for those with autism—by liberating children from dank institutions, campaigning for their right to go to school, challenging expert opinion on what it means to have autism, and persuading society to accept those who are different.  It is the story of women like Ruth Sullivan, who rebelled against a medical establishment that blamed cold and rejecting “refrigerator mothers” for causing autism; and of fathers who pushed scientists to dig harder for treatments. Many others played starring roles too: doctors like Leo Kanner, who pioneered our understanding of autism; lawyers like Tom Gilhool, who took the families’ battle for education to the courtroom; scientists who sparred over how to treat autism; and those with autism, like Temple Grandin, Alex Plank, and Ari Ne’eman, who explained their inner worlds and championed the philosophy of neurodiversity. This is also a story of fierce controversies—from the question of whether there is truly an autism “epidemic,” and whether vaccines played a part in it; to scandals involving “facilitated communication,” one of many treatments that have proved to be blind alleys; to stark disagreements about whether scientists should pursue a cure for autism. There are dark turns too: we learn about experimenters feeding LSD to children with autism, or shocking them with electricity to change their behavior; and the authors reveal compelling evidence that Hans Asperger, discoverer of the syndrome named after him, participated in the Nazi program that consigned disabled children to death.<

    He was a successful psychologist and writer, with books to his name and bylines in major magazines. But none of that mattered. The impulse to take his own life remained. At times it felt all but inescapable.   Bering survived. And in addition to relief, the fading of his suicidal thoughts brought curiosity. Where had they come from? Would they return? Is the suicidal impulse found in other animals? Or is our vulnerability to suicide a uniquely human evolutionary development? In Suicidal, Bering answers all these questions and more, taking us through the science and psychology of suicide, revealing its cognitive secrets and the subtle tricks our minds play on us when we’re easy emotional prey. Scientific studies, personal stories, and remarkable cross-species comparisons come together to help readers critically analyze their own doomsday thoughts while gaining broad insight into a problem that, tragically, will most likely touch all of us at some point in our lives. But while the subject is certainly a heavy one, Bering’s touch is light. Having been through this himself, he knows that sometimes the most effective response to our darkest moments is a gentle humor, one that, while not denying the seriousness of suffering, at the same time acknowledges our complicated, flawed, and yet precious existence.   Authoritative, accessible, personal, profound—there’s never been a book on suicide like this. It will help you understand yourself and your loved ones, and it will change the way you think about this most vexing of human problems.

    Imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp, they miraculously survive the Nazis’ murderous brutality.Then Gustav learns he is being sent to Auschwitz—and certain death.For Fritz, letting his father go is unthinkable. Desperate to remain together, Fritz makes an incredible choice: he insists he must go too. To the Nazis, one death camp is the same as another, and so the boy is allowed to follow. Throughout the six years of horror they witness and immeasurable suffering they endure as victims of the camps, one constant keeps them alive: their love and hope for the future. Based on the secret diary that Gustav kept as well as meticulous archival research and interviews with members of the Kleinmann family, including Fritz’s younger brother Kurt, sent to the United States at age eleven to escape the war, The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz is Gustav and Fritz’s story—an extraordinary account of courage, loyalty, survival, and love that is unforgettable.

    It is all here: the joy and pain, the death and drama, the mistakes, successes, and secrets. Nurse reads like a novel, but sticks in the memory like real experience-because it is.

    Myers in his quest for unusual case studies as he unravels medical mysteries.