And If, By The End [of This

You Are A Placebo Responder. Your Body Plays Tricks On Your Mind. You Cannot Be Trusted.

If You Put Me In Charge Of The Medical Research Budget, I Would Cancel All Primary Research, I Would Cancel All New Trials, For Just One Year, And I Would Spend The Money Exclusively On Making Sure That We Make The Best Possible Use Of The Clinical Evidence That We Already Have.

If I Was Writing A Lifestyle Book It Would Have The Same Advice On Every Page, And You’d Know It All Already. Eat Lots Of Fruit And Vegetables, And Live Your Whole Life In Every Way As Well As You Can: Exercise Regularly As Part Of Your Daily Routine, Avoid Obesity, Don’t Drink Too Much, Don’t Smoke, And Don’t Get Distracted From The Real, Basic, Simple Causes Of Ill Health. But As We Will See, Even These Things Are Hard To Do On Your Own, And In Reality Require Wholesale Social And Political Changes.

In The Past, [medicalization]has Been Portrayed As Something That Doctors Inflict On A Passive And Un-suspecting World - An Expansion Of The Medical Empire. But In Reality, It Seems That These Reductionist Bio-medical Stories Can Appeal To Us All, Because Complex Problems Often Have Depressingly-complex Causes, And The Solutions Can Be Taxing, And Unsatisfactory.

I Agree, The World Would Be A Better Place If Doctors Were Less Enthusiastic About Adopting Very New Drugs.