Medicine's Labyrinth - by Robert Aronowitz (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A physician diagnoses why doctors and patients face so many uncertainties as they navigate a dizzying array of medical treatments and technologies--and lays out a treatment plan for better health care.

Americans now depend on ever more potent drugs, devices, and procedures. While many of these interventions can improve our health and extend our lives, their widespread availability has created a medical landscape where patients make increasingly complex choices about their care.

In Medicine's Labyrinth, physician historian Robert Aronowitz examines the challenging decisions posed by the widespread use of so many medical interventions. Drawing on medical literature, patient accounts, and historical case studies, he shows how medical progress can erode certainty, transform the illness experience, and deepen dependence on technology. To understand how these challenges have played out over the past century, Aronowitz explores medicine's attempts to safely resuscitate premature infants, treat prostate cancer, and deal with too many disease diagnoses. He concludes with a call for physicians to pay renewed attention to patients' lived experiences and to offer clinical judgments grounded in observations rather than algorithms.

Medicine's Labyrinth is a clear-eyed exploration of how the very successes of modern medicine have made care harder, and why the fragile trust that sustains its institutions, policies, and practices must be rebuilt.

Review Quotes

"In Medicine's Labyrinth, Aronowitz offers a brilliant and original assessment of the paradox of contemporary medical care: the widespread use of breakthrough technologies and medications often makes medical diagnosis and treatment more complex and uncertain, not less. Using an impressive array of historical case studies, he demonstrates that just as undertreatment leads to poor outcomes, so too can overtreatment. He argues that the intensification and complexity of contemporary medicine have the capacity to extend life, but at the same time to produce secondary effects that cause illness, suffering, and harm; in some instances, he shows how difficult it can be to determine whether symptoms are the result of the disease or the treatment. Aronowitz ultimately advocates for new and humane strategies to reduce the widening gap between cure and care."

"Important, insightful, and provocative, Medicine's Labyrinth recasts our understanding of sickness as situated, dynamic, and time-bound, not an unchanging entity, or a number in a disease classification. An enlightening read for anyone who thinks seriously about the practice of clinical medicine."

About the Author

Robert Aronowitz is the Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Social Sciences emeritus and professor emeritus of the history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include Risky Medicine: Our Quest to Cure Fear and Uncertainty, also published by the University of Chicago Press; Making Sense of Illness: Science, Society, and Disease; and Unnatural History: Breast Cancer and American Society.