How to Stay Well

In The Last Well Person Dr Nortin Hadler argues that unfounded assertions, massaged data, and flagrant marketing have led to the medicalization of everyday life. He systematically builds the case that constant medical monitoring and unnecessary intervention are hazards to our health, severely reducing our quality of life. Sick with worry, we are a culture panicked by many illnesses - cardio-vascular disease, obesity, adult onset diabetes, fatigue, and breast cancer. Especially insidious, contends Hadler, is the misuse of longevity statistics in turning the difficulties experienced through a natural course of life, such as aging, back pain, and osteoporosis, into illnesses. He shows that the medical profession's current notion that such predicaments can be avoided is fatuous and self-serving. And he argues that most heart bypass surgery, mammography, cholesterol screening, and treatment to prevent prostate cancer should be avoided.