Dr. Golem: How to Think about Medicine » (New Edition)

Harry Collins is Distinguished Research Professor of Sociology at Cardiff University; director of the Centre for the Study of Knowledge, Expertise, and Science; and author of Gravity's Shadow: The Search for Gravitational Waves, also published by the University of Chicago Press. Trevor Pinch is professor in and chair of the Department of Science and Technology Studies and professor of sociology at Cornell University. Together, they are the authors of The Golem: What You Should Know about Science and The Golem at Large: What You Should Know about Technology.

Dr. Golem explores some of the mysteries and complexities of medicine while untangling the inherent conundrums of scientific research and highlighting its vagaries. In eight chapters devoted to case studies of modern medicine, Collins and Pinch consider the prevalence of tonsillectomies, the placebo effect and randomized control trials, bogus doctors, CPR, the efficacy of Vitamin C in fighting cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, AIDS cures, and vaccination. Throughout, Collins and Pinch remind readers that medical science is an economic as well as a social consideration, encapsulated for the authors in the timeless struggle to balance the good health of the many with the good health of a few. Dr. Golem is a timely analysis of the limitations of medicine that never loses sight of its strengths.

“Collins and Pinch carefully tease out key conflicts in the way that medical knowledge is constructed and used and endeavor to show how necessarily complicated medical decision-making must be. . . . They investigate three important issues that lie at the core of medicine’s uncertainty: individual versus collective interests; medicine as a science versus a healing art; and the nature of medical expertise. . . . The authors neither jump on the critical bandwagon nor apologize for medicine’s failings, rather they show that the inherent discrepancy between the pace of medical discovery and the need for immediate succour is one that must be addressed jointly by physician and patient.”—Noah Raizman, The Lancet

Preface and Acknowledgments

Introduction - Medicine as Science and Medicine as Succor

1. The Hole in the Heart of Medicine: The Placebo Effect

2. Faking It for Real: Bogus Doctors

3. Tonsils: Diagnosing and Dealing with Uncertainty

4. Alternative Medicine: The Cases of Vitamin C and Cancer

5. Yuppie Flu, Fibromyalgia, and Other Contested Diseases

6. Defying Death: Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR)

7. The AIDS Activists

8. Vaccination and Parents' Rights: Mumps, Measles, Rubella (MMR), and Pertussis

Conclusion - The Themes Revisited

Notes


Bibliography


Index