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BLIND SPOTS

WHEN MEDICINE GETS IT WRONG, AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR OUR HEALTH

An eye-opening look at how the American medical industry’s rigidity has stunted its reliability.

The misguided prevalence of “gut feeling” in medical dogma.

In his follow-up to The Price We Pay (2019), Makary, a public health researcher and professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, elaborates on the enduring misconceptions plaguing modern medicine in terms of research breakthroughs that have been largely underappreciated, overlooked, or simply ignored in a clinical setting. He cites several recent studies to bolster his position, such as a 16,608-woman study on menopausal hormone replacement therapy concluding that it causes breast cancer development. Despite the lack of evidentiary support for this conclusion, the study’s authors continue to tout it to clinicians while overlooking HRT’s considerable benefits. The overuse of prescribed antibiotics for infections is juxtaposed against research citing the microbiome imbalance they cause by obliterating beneficial bacterium. Makary also discusses the medical groupthink about dietary cholesterol, ovarian cancer, silicone breast implants, and complicated childbirths, among others. Presenting a fascinating study on peanut anaphylaxis, Makary rails against the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendation that children avoid the nuts altogether instead of considering research indicating that reintroducing small doses of peanuts (in conjunction with powerful immune suppressants) can actually prove curative. He pauses midway through the book to lucidly examine how the mechanisms of the human mind naturally resist innovative ideas and approaches. As a public health advocate, Makary is simultaneously dazzled by the sophistication of modern medicine and alarmed by the medical industry’s stubborn reluctance to adapt and evolve in the midst of supportive research meant to challenge interventional therapies and procedures. The author’s critical eye is well suited to this clinically sound report appealing for closer scrutiny and a redesigning of the medical establishment, and he coaches readers with or without clinical expertise to “ask for the underlying evidence or rationale to support a health recommendation.”

An eye-opening look at how the American medical industry’s rigidity has stunted its reliability.

Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024

ISBN: 9781639735310

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024

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ELON MUSK

Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.

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A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.

To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.

Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.

Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023

ISBN: 9781982181284

Page Count: 688

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023

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THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS

Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...

A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.

In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.

Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.

Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010

ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010

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