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| The Healthy Skeptic: Cutting through the Hype about Your Health
ISBN: 9780520933231
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / University of California Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Health education; Consumer education; Health products; Quacks and quackery; Health -- Information services;
A medical journalist with a Ph.D in health policy, Davis's first book provides a helpful look at the dangers of taking health advice at face value. When confronted with a claim that "studies prove," Davis advises considering eight questions, among them "What kind of study is it?" "Could the findings be a fluke?" "Who paid for the research?" and "Was it peer reviewed?" Looking at pharm ads, government campaigns, consumer advocates and other sources of (mis)information, Davis provides readers with a wary eye for even "official" pronouncements. For instance, Davis recounts how, in 1985, a division of the National Institute of Health hired a PR firm to design a campaign on the dangers of high cholesterol, and assumed that the drop in cholesterol levels and heart disease-related deaths over the next decades were directly related; that correlation led doctors to triple the number of patients taking statins (cholesterol-lowering drugs). What they've ignored, at the peril of many, is that smoking rates decreased and treatments for heart disease improved during that period; further troubling is the fact that eight out the nine experts on a recent study were being paid by statin manufacturers. An insightful and informative look at a number of health issues, this should be enlightening, if a bit frightening, reading for those seeking to take charge of their health. (June) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.
Davis Robert :
Robert J. Davis is an award-winning medical journalist whose work has appeared on CNN, PBS, WebMD, and in the Wall Street Journal. He holds a master's degree in public health from Emory University and a PhD in health policy from Brandeis University. A sought-after speaker on health and the media, he also teaches at Emory's Rollins School of Public Health. |
