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Is lowering your temperature when you have a fever helpful? Do you really need to finishevery course of antibiotics? Or could some of the treatments you think are healing youactually be harming you?Medicine has significantly advanced in the last few decades. But while we have learned a lot, we still rely on medical interventions that are vastly out of date and can adversely affect our health. In this game-changing book, infectious-disease expert and Rotavirus vaccine inventor Dr Offit highlights fifteen common medical interventions still recommended and practised bymedical professionals, despite clear evidence that they are harmful - including the treatment of acid reflux in babies and the reliance on heart stents and knee surgery. By presenting medical alternatives, Overkill gives patients invaluable information to help them ask their doctors better questions and to advocate for their own health.
About the author
Dr Paul Offit is the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, as well as the Maurice R. Hilleman professor of vaccinology and a professor of paediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of ten medical narratives, including Vaccinated, Deadly Choices, and Bad Faith.
Summary
Is lowering your temperature when you have a fever helpful? Do you really need to finish
every course of antibiotics? Or could some of the treatments you think are healing you
actually be harming you?
Medicine has significantly advanced in the last few decades. But while we have learned a lot, we still rely on medical interventions that are vastly out of date and can adversely affect our health.
In this game-changing book, infectious-disease expert and Rotavirus vaccine inventor Dr Offit highlights fifteen common medical interventions still recommended and practised by
medical professionals, despite clear evidence that they are harmful — including the treatment of acid reflux in babies and the reliance on heart stents and knee surgery.
By presenting medical alternatives, Overkill gives patients invaluable information to help them ask their doctors better questions and to advocate for their own health.
Additional text
Praise for Do You Believe in Magic?:
‘With a fascinating history of hucksters, and a critical chronology of how supplements escaped regulation, Offit cautions consumers not to ‘give alternative medicine a free pass because we’re fed up with conventional medicine.’ His is a bravely unsentimental and dutifully researched guide for consumers to distinguish between quacks and a cure.’ STARRED REVIEW
