Are we all diseased time bombs? In The Last Well Person Dr Nortin Hadler argues that unfounded assertions, massaged data, and flagrant marketing have led to the medicalization of everyday life. He systematically builds the case that constant medical monitoring and unnecessary intervention are hazards to our health, severely reducing our quality of life. Sick with worry, we are a culture panicked by many illnesses - cardio-vascular disease, obesity, adult onset diabetes, fatigue, and breast cancer. Especially insidious, contends Hadler, is the misuse of longevity statistics in turning the...

This book is a controversial skewering of how doctors and the medical industry turn healthy people into patients.

In By the Bedside of the Patient, Nortin Hadler places current efforts to reform medical education--from the undergraduate level through residency programs and on to continuing medical education--in historical context. In doing so, he traces the evolution of medical school curricula, residency and fellowship programs, and the clinical practices they promoted. Hadler examines crucial junctures in history to locate the seeds for reform. Some believe that medical education and training should highlight literature, ethics, and culture, while others emphasize science and efficiency to...

Nortin Hadler knows backaches. For more than three decades as a physician and medical researcher, he has studied the experience of low back pain in people who are otherwise healthy. Hadler terms the low back pain that everyone suffers at one time or another "regional back pain." In this book, he addresses the history and treatment of the ailment with the healthy skepticism that has become his trademark, taking the "Hadlerian" approach to backaches and the backache treatment industry in order to separate the helpful from the hype.

Basing his critique on an analysis of the most current...