Kategoria BISAC: Health & Fitness >> Health Care Issues

America's health care system is unraveling, with millions of hard-working people unable to pay for prescription drugs and regular checkups, let alone hospital visits. Jonathan Cohn traveled across the United States--the only country in the developed world that does not guarantee its citizens access to medical care--to investigate why this crisis is happening and to see firsthand its impact on ordinary Americans. Passionate, powerful, illuminating, and often devastating, Sick chronicles the decline of America's health care system, and lays bare the consequences any one of us could suffer if...

Using the examples of Vioxx, Celebrex, cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, and anti-depressants, Overdosed America shows that at the heart of the current crisis in American medicine lies the commercialization of medical knowledge itself.

Drawing on his background in statistics, epidemiology, and health policy, John Abramson, M.D., reveals the ways in which the drug companies have misrepresented statistical evidence, misled doctors, and compromised our health. The good news is that the best scientific evidence shows that reclaiming responsibility for your own health is often...

Witness the following scenarios:...

Today, most people use prescription medications. Every year, the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry produces new medicines that treat everything from arthritis to AIDS, from high cholesterol to depression. But, despite recent controversies regarding the safety of drugs, consumers know little about the medications that they ingest and inject. How are these new medicines invented? How do consumers know that drugs are safe and effective? How are they tested? Who regulates their production - and who watches the regulators? How do drug companies produce the vast quantities needed for...

A nation watched in horror as 17-year-old Jessica Santillian died needlessly after a heart-lung transplant in 2003. She had been given organs with the wrong blood type. That error killed her. It is just one among tens of thousands of less publicized errors that occur in U.S. hospitals each year. Author Karin Berntsen, a veteran of the hospital and health care industry, takes us through the headlines, and the events never publicized, into hospital wards and surgical rooms to see how errors are made causing disability or death. She gives graphic examples of actual events that illustrate the...

While millions of Americans receive vaccinations each year, a vocal segment of the population is opposed to all immunizations--some even refusing to get mandated vaccinations for their children. In The Vaccine Controversy, Dr. Kurt Link--a specialist in internal medicine--explores that paradox and provides a history of vaccine development, including such possible future vaccines as those being developed in the hope of immunizing against HIV. A strong supporter of vaccination programs, Link explains the immune system and how it works, as well as outlining the various types of...

The politicalization of research findings has become prevalent over the past two decades. Politics often prevents the implementation of policy supported by irrefutable science. Most of us understand something about how this is happening with stem cell research, but Cornell's Madelon Finkel delves deep into the subject to make the issues clear, also revealing how ideology and politics are distorting, diminishing and destroying scientific research results regarding topics from needle exchange, HIV/AIDS prevention and medical marijuana to antiobiotic use with animals later marketed for human...

Each year, more than 33 million Americans receive health care for mental or substance-use conditions, or both. Together, mental and substance-use illnesses are the leading cause of death and disability for women, the highest for men ages 15-44, and the second highest for all men. Effective treatments exist, but services are frequently fragmented and, as with general health care, there are barriers that prevent many from receiving these treatments as designed or at all. The consequences of this are seriousa "for these individuals and their families; their employers and the workforce; for...

Most people associate fluoride with the practice of intentionally adding fluoride to public drinking water supplies for the prevention of tooth decay. However, fluoride can also enter public water systems from natural sources, including runoff from the weathering of fluoride-containing rocks and soils and leaching from soil into groundwater. Fluoride pollution from various industrial emissions can also contaminate water supplies. In a few areas of the United States fluoride concentrations in water are much higher than normal, mostly from natural sources. Fluoride is one of the drinking...

"Gripping...A superb resource for boomers dealing with their parents' final days...as well as for health-care professionals who need to hear this story from the other side."

--Kirkus Reviews

With advances in medicine, technology, and daily diet and exercise practices, Americans are living longer than ever before. We have an unprecedented opportunity for meaningful closure - free of pain, among loved ones, with our affairs in order and spiritual calm attained. Instead, most of us discover that our doctor has minimal training in providing end-of-life care, and will seek to extend...

Every day, newspapers and television news programs present stories on the latest controversies over healthcare and medical advances, but they do not have the space to provide detailed background on the issues. Websites and weblogs provide information from activists and partisans intent on presenting their side of a story. But where can students - or even ordinary citizens - go to obtain unbiased, detailed background on the medical issues affecting their daily lives? This volume in the Health and Medical Issues Today series provides readers and researchers a balanced, in-depth introduction...

Drawing on four decades of practice as a cardiologist and a vast knowledge of literature and medical history, Dr. Lown...