Health & Fitness Health Care Issues
Seeking Sickness
Medical Screening and the Misguided Hunt for Disease
- Publisher
- Greystone Books Ltd
- Initial publish date
- Apr 2012
- Category
- Health Care Issues, Personal & Practical Guides
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Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781771000321
- Publish Date
- Jul 2012
- List Price
- $18.95
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eBook
- ISBN
- 9781771000338
- Publish Date
- Apr 2012
- List Price
- $14.00
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Where to buy it
Description
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Why wouldn't you want to be screened to see if you're at risk for cancer, heart disease, or another potentially lethal condition? After all, better safe than sorry. Right?
Not so fast, says Alan Cassels. His Seeking Sickness takes us inside the world of medical screening, where well-meaning practitioners and a profit-motivated industry offer to save our lives by exploiting our fears. He writes that promoters of screening overpromise on its benefits and downplay its harms, which can range from the merely annoying to the life threatening. If you're facing a screening test for breast or prostate cancer, high cholesterol, or low testosterone, someone is about to turn you into a patient. You need to ask yourself one simple question: Am I ready for all the things that could go wrong?
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About the author
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Alan Cassels is a drug policy researcher at the University of Victoria, in British Columbia, and is the co-author (with Ray Moynihan) of the international bestseller Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All into Patients.
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