Release Date: 03 August, 1999
Paperback
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Book Description
Americans have become so accustomed to following doctors' orders that many prescriptions, medical tests, and surgical procedures are accepted without question. This blind faith can be dangerous! Modern medicine offers us a wide range of powerful treatments for ailments large and small. But did you know that some common "cures" come with serious, life-threatening risks, or may do nothing at all? This book contains much more vital information you need to know to take charge of your health--before you see your doctor. Includes information on: cholesterol-lowering medications; high-strength asthma inhalers; steroids; antibiotics; and Ritalin.Some startling facts you should know: - Some sholesterol-lowering medications can actually increase your chances of dying.
- The rise in asthma deaths may be linked to high-strength inhalers.
- In some cases, it's safer to do nothing than have surgery for prostate cancer.
- Steroids, now widely prescribed for many minor conditions, can cause immediate, permanent, debilitating damage.
- Bone scans to screen for osteoporosis are imprecise, often inaccurate, and may not signify anything.
- In the overwhelming majority of cases, antibiotics are prescribed for conditions they cannot treat.
- Ritalin, taken by as many as a million American children, has questionable benefits, numerous side effects, and a high potential for addiction or abuse.<
- The U.S. Natinoal Institutes of Health estimate that 90% of patients who undergo bypass surgery receive almost no benefits.
- and much more vital information you need to know--before you see your doctor.
About the Author
Lynne McTaggart is an American award-winning investigative journalist whose books include The Baby Brokers: The Marketing of White Babies in America and Kathleen Kennedy: Her Life and Times. In the mideighties she moved to England and founded a newsletter, What Doctors Don't Tell You, which today is now the top newsletter in Britain and considered one of the best newsletters in the United States as well. What Doctors Don't Tell You was published as a book by Avon in 1999 and has been translated into six languages. Rating 3.5
Too shrill and hystericalAs director of an organization concerned with medical error, I'm acutely aware of the hazards. There is some useful information in this book, but too much of the time it is over-the-top. The author latches onto dubious and lurid sources; anything that will bolster her thesis, no matter how questionable. It is impossible for the typical reader to sort out the credible information from the nonsense. The book is so extreme that it tends to discredit the effort to inform consumers about medical risks.Read this before your next medical test or surgery!From my own reading elsewhere plus less than positive experiences with modern medicine, this book rings true to me. It's very well documented with medical journal articles. Perhaps the most startling fact is that doctors discuss among themselves the dangers and ineffectiveness of much of modern medicine without changing their practices or informing the public -- maddening! I know from my own experience of the dangers of the overuse of antibiotics, just one of the areas McTaggart addresses. I'm suffering (now in my forties) for my family doctor's decision to put me on tetracycline for acne when I was a teenager. I think I was on it for a couple of years before getting my first vaginal yeast infection. Now I have chronic systemic candida (yeast) overgrowth and believe me it is tough to shake this. Who knows what other havoc is being wreaked by so-called wonder drugs? McTaggart tells you. Please read this and pass the word. Don't even consider surgery or a drug regimen without reading this book! |
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