The trouble with medicine M Konner The trouble with medicine BBC Books 208pp £16.99 0-563-36377-0 [Formula: see text].
To accompany the BBC television series of the same name, The Trouble with Medicine explores the doctor/ patient relationship, hospital medicine, drugs, genetic medicine, surgery, mental disorder, life-support and HIV/AIDS. Dr Melvin Konner draws on material from the UK, the USA, Austria, Australia, India, and Spain to illustrate the development of each chapter's subject, to compare different health-care systems, and to raise related ethical issues. It is the priorities implicit in Western medical practice which he brings into question - particularly the prestige of high-tech acute care which burns up resources perhaps better placed in preventive services.