The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine

Time Warner Books UK, 1999. Paperback. Good. The achievements of medicine in the post-war period rank as one of the most sustained epochs of human endeavour since the Renaissance. So dramatic and profound has been the assault on disease that it is now almost impossible to imagine the world of just fifty years ago when there were no drugs for m ost killer diseases. These achievements have had a profoundly beneficial ef fect on people's lives as well as being a liberating force, freeing them fr om the fear of illness or untimely death, permitting them for the first tim e in human history to live out their natural lifespans, while significantly ameliorating the chronic disabilities associated with ageing. The scope of medicine is immeasurably greater than it was fifty years ago, but the opti mism generated by those achievements seems to have evaporated. Medicine is doing better but feeling worse. THE RISE AND FALL OF MODERN MEDICINE presents for the first time a comprehensive and searching appraisal of the science, philosophy and politics of modern medicine.