An impassioned exposé that uncovers a significant danger within the contemporary health care industry.
Intensive reporting on the downsides of the high-risk medical device industry.
More than a decade ago, longtime BMJ contributor Lenzer abandoned her career as an emergency room physician associate to become an investigative medical journalist. Her debut book, an inspired inquiry into the politics of the industry, is startling and provocative. Once she established herself as a journalist, the author was contacted by patients and physicians who were eager to blow the whistle on their harrowing experiences with drugs and medical devices that were falsely touted as safe. She effectively focuses on Dennis Fegan, a middle-aged former firefighter with epilepsy who battled increasing episodes of seizures. Through his story and those of others, the author shows how even cutting-edge clinical technology can fail patients. Ultimately culminating in a “complicated web of human error, corporate manipulation, and regulatory failure,” Fegan’s ordeal began with the head trauma he’d endured as a child after a car accident. Suffering seizures decades later, he agreed to the implantation of an FDA–approved, newly developed nerve-stimulating device; though initially hopeful, he experienced pain and further seizures almost immediately. The story unravels further to incorporate the “questionable tactics” of the device’s blame-shifting, unscrupulous manufacturer and its representatives, nervous reshufflings of neurologists who treated Fegan, and his resultant near-death experience. As Lenzer paints this distressing picture through Fegan’s tragic mishap and heroic crusade for justice, she also incorporates statistical data, a historic, representative sampling of medical drug and device disasters, and varied medical and patient perspectives on implantable devices. Reading like a cross between a riveting medical thriller and “a Kafka novel,” the book is a powerful cautionary tale that reveals the problem as one of profiteering, regulatory negligence, and the marriage of medicine and technology that can spur both miraculous modern breakthroughs and nightmarish consequences for patients. The author closes with a series of reform action points.
An impassioned exposé that uncovers a significant danger within the contemporary health care industry.Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-34376-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
The best so far of the recent spate of ``this is what 50 is like'' books from women leading the Baby Boomers into middle age. Although Dowling (You Mean I Don't Have to Feel This Way, 1991; The Cinderella Complex, not reviewed; etc.) suffers from her generation's smug conviction that life before the Boomers was politically and culturally static, she doesn't let self- satisfaction stand in the way of assessing a woman's life after 50 with penetrating honesty. In fact, as she points out, the Boomers are the first generation to peer over their reading glasses into the future and know they will likely live into their 80s and perhaps beyond. Dowling looks at the problems this will create for women and comes up with a scenario that is optimistic without deteriorating into vacuous cheerleading. The book is organized around eight ``choice points,'' issues that women face as they round the half-century mark, including social barriers, aging parents, the beauty myth, work, love, sex, money, and hormone replacement therapy. Anecdotal evidence is backed with solid research bolstering Dowling's various arguments. For instance, so convinced is she of the value of hormone therapy— she views opposition as either political or medically misguided- -that ``Estrogen Wars'' is the longest chapter in the book. Dowling contends effectively that it is an indispensable tool in dealing with the physical, mental, and emotional changes that many, if not most, postmenopausal women suffer. Nor does she gloss over the problems that aging women face in finding sex partners, negotiating promotions, and putting a secure financial future in place. One stumbling point: the ``fictionalized'' group of Mamas, a device used to introduce various midlife issues. Vivid, lively, and informative, with a secure grip on reality combined with a conviction that, at 50 and beyond, not only is the glass half full, it's ready for a refill.
Pub Date: March 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-553-09059-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A well-credentialed scientist's hard-driving attack on the accepted view that AIDS is an infectious disease caused by HIV. Duesberg (Molecular biology/Univ. of Calif., Berkeley), an early researcher in the field of retroviruses, asserts that HIV, like virtually all retroviruses, is harmless. He finds that HIV meets none of the usual criteria (such as the six laws of virology) used to establish that a microbe causes disease. But if that is so, why do scientists persist in saying that AIDS is an epidemic caused by HIV? As Duesberg tells it, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention needed a serious epidemic to justify its continued existence, and by naming AIDS a single contagious disease, it created an atmosphere of public fear that brought it increased funding and power. The biomedical establishment took note. Having failed to find a viral cause of cancer, Duesberg says, virus hunters needed a new disease, and AIDS was it. The HIV-AIDS connection was then announced by Robert Gallo, head of a retrovirus lab at the National Cancer Institute, at a 1984 press conference rather than demonstrated in a peer- reviewed scientific paper. Further, Duesberg charges, the pharmaceutical companies exploited the situation by bringing back highly toxic failed cancer drugs, such as AZT, which, he says, destroys the immune system and causes AIDS-like symptoms. Duesberg cites other scientists who have questioned the HIV-AIDS hypothesis, among them several Nobel laureates, including Kary Mullis (for Chemistry), the author of this book's foreword. Duesberg's own theory is that AIDS is linked to the use of immunity-suppressing illicit drugs (such as crack and ``poppers''), and he urges investigation along these lines. One need not accept Duesberg's drug hypothesis, however, to be persuaded that the serious charges he makes deserve serious answers. A controversial book, certain to be met with strong resistance from the biomedical establishment. Four appendixes (not seen) include articles on HIV by Duesberg in scientific journals.
Pub Date: March 22, 1996
ISBN: 0-89526-470-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1996
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
