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The Last Well Person: How to Stay Well Despite the Health-Care System | 
 enlarge | Author: Nortin M. Hadler
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $13.74
You Save: $6.21 (31%)
New (22) Used (5) from $13.74
Avg. Customer Rating:  21 reviews
Sales Rank: 47707
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 313
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6 x 0.7
ISBN: 0773532544
Dewey Decimal Number: 362
EAN: 9780773532540
ASIN: 0773532544
Publication Date: May 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Dr Nortin Hadler believes that heart bypass surgery is usually a waste of money, time, and energy, that treatment for prostate cancer does more harm than good, and that testing for breast cancer is not always useful or effective. The Last Well Person shows how a self-serving medical industry promotes constant monitoring and unnecessary intervention, turning healthy people into patients. Sick with worry, we have become a culture panicked over unfounded illnesses - a culture that treats everyone as a diseased time bomb. Hadler systematically builds the case that many medical interventions are hazardous to our health. Especially insidious is the misuse of longevity statistics in turning the difficulties experienced through a natural course of life, such as aging and osteoporosis, into illnesses. He argues that unfounded assertions and flagrant marketing have led to the medicalization of everyday life and he offers practical solutions on such topics as aging, obesity, adult onset diabetes, and back problems. In The Last Well Person Hadler addresses the tough questions about our health care, cutting through the medical white noise.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 16 more reviews...
 Physician Review of The Last Well Person February 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have been a practicing physician for many years.
I learned a great deal from this book. The author is a recognized
authority . I enthusiastically recommend this
book to all physicians and lay people who have an interest
in the medical field. It is very well written and it held
my interest.
Ignore your doctor but take care of yourself. December 12, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
As a practicing physician I approached this book with some skepticism. Even though the reasoning is at time flawed and incomplete the essential message is clear. Physicians in the US have an intrinsic conflict of interest between making a living and healing patients. If interventional cardiologists and cardiac surgeons actually explained known risks and benefits of their procedures the cardiology "business" would collapse. The problem is that would require that the physicians actually understand the risks and benefits- which is rare.
Everyone should read this book then ask your physician tough questions about your healthcare.
Great Book very informative. October 6, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I am halfway reading thru the book and I must say this book dead on in its presentation of life "maladies". I have been one the skeptics before in this touted back surgeries for pain with no organ function deficits. Working in health care industry, I have seen people having back surgeries without any relief from pain. And to the extreme I know a person who had multiple back surgery in the 80's due to pain as his orthopedic doctor found "anomaly" in his back bone. He was told he may not walk again if he don't undergo back surgery. Well... he had the back surgery and he never walked again -- got paralysis of legs DUE TO surgery. Some of us will this this argument disconcerting as it is contrary to what we have been hearing all this time in media releases. I am even impressed about his assessment on those new pain medications, Vioxx, Bextra purported to be the next generation pain killer and safer than aspirin. He wrote in the book about the inconsistencies of study brought about by the vested interest of pharmaceutical company and the researcher conducting having ties to these companies. He wrote his suspicions on the safety of these drugs based (on deaths of participants) on the complete study versus the published copies in magazines and even in the medical journals. And he wrote this book before the Bextra and Vioxx were recalled from the market. In this book he never argued that we need don't need to go to physician, in fact he argues that we need to. So he arms us with knowledge to ask the right questions and discussions. That not every visit to the physician's office ends up in pharmaceutical prescription. Talk about coping might be a powerful precription
 How to Avoid Getting Trapped into Health Care You Do Not Need July 8, 2007
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book has lots of great information to dispell the medical myths that more health care is always better. This book may save you from heart surgery you do not need, or from taking drugs that are more likely to harm than to help. It is an update on Medical Nemesis filled my data. My only criticism is that the reading is sometimes tedious. This author would do well to have the help of a medical writer who is used to engaging the public. I'm a physician and I found it tough sledding at times.
Provokes a lot of thought December 20, 2006
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
As a well person as enjoyed thinking of the issues addressed in the book. I spent a lot of time confirming Dr Hadler's assertions and found them to be surprising but true. Also learned many new words.
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