Overrated Medicine

Is Medicine Overrated?

Given medicine’s poor record, physicians should prescribe and patients consume far fewer medications, a new book argues.

Many widely consumed medications are “barely effective and have many harmful side effects,” according to Medical Nihilism, a book by philosopher Jacob Stegenga. Credit: Peter Dazeley Getty Images
By John Horgan on July 1, 2019

For years I have ranted about the flaws of medicine, especially when it comes to mental illness and cancer. But my complaints are mild compared to those of Jacob Stegenga, a philosopher of science at the University of Cambridge./.../