The Death of Humane Medicine

Petr Skrabanek Social Affairs Unit, pounds sterling 12.95 + pounds sterling2 postage, pp 212 ISBN 0-90731-59-2

Professor Skrabanek defines humane medicine as caring for individual patients who come for relief of pain, compassion, and such limited cures as medicine can effect, both doctor and patient accepting the reality of death. His proposal is that humane medicine is being displaced by dubious prevention programmes, which coerce populations into “healthy” lifestyles and unjustified screening and doctors into becoming agents of the state.

I have some sympathy with his suggestion, my own lifestyle never having been particularly healthy. The primary motive of most health promotion campaigns is …