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Health & Fitness Health Care Issues

Seeking Sickness

Medical Screening and the Misguided Hunt for Disease

by (author) Alan Cassels

Publisher
Greystone Books Ltd
Initial publish date
Apr 2012
Category
Health Care Issues, Personal & Practical Guides
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781771000321
    Publish Date
    Jul 2012
    List Price
    $18.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781771000338
    Publish Date
    Apr 2012
    List Price
    $14.00

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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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Alan Cassels' profile page