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.
Review quotes
"A brutal critique of much of what we do in medicine." New England Journal of Medicine
"Like a veteran umpire, he calls 'em as he sees them. Much of what modern medicine advocates bears scrutiny, and Hadler examines it critically. Must reading for the public and for physicians." Journal of the American Medical Association
"Hadler attempts to disabuse his readers of the pervasive and arguably mistaken belief that there is good evidence to support the broad application of such things as coronary artery bypass grafting for angina; cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood glucose monitoring; and screening for colon, breast, and prostate cancer." Canadian Medical Association Journal
Nortin M. Hadler is professor of Medicine and Microbiology/Immunology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and attending rheumatologist, University of North Carolina Hospitals.
