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...

Entry into the long-term health care system often happens suddenly. A mental or physical breakdown seriously weakens you or your parents health, leaving you unable to cope with a host of complex decisions, rules, and information. Families must nevertheless make rapid, vital decisions about long-term care, often involving a nursing home. At the same time, new state laws and federal regulations make it nearly impossible for consumers to understand the rules of long-term care that apply in their case let alone how to use them. Such traumatic situations often lead families into a state of...

"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...

All too often people with high blood pressure get the same frustrating advice from their doctors: lose some weight, lay off the salt, and fill a bunch of prescriptions. One of the nation's leading authorities on...