“Disturbances” reviewed in the THE

In a great Times Higher Education piece, professor of psychology David Smail reviews Disturbances of the Mind by Douwe Draaisma.

In this cleverly constructed book, several of the puzzles of present-day neurology are considered alongside accounts of the lives and times of those with whom they are eponymously associated. Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and Korsakoff’s, Tourette’s and Asperger’s syndromes feature among the better-known instances, but lesser-known syndromes such as the those of Clerambault and Capgras (perhaps more psychiatric than neurological) are also considered. Each receives a chapter to itself.

The author’s particular skill is in making his subject matter interesting at several levels and to different groups of readers. His accounts of the successes and sorrows of those who are seen (not always accurately, as he points out) as the discoverers of these well-known diseases are historically vivid without resorting to hagiography; and the story of the fortunes of their brain-children as they negotiate the fluctuations of medical and social fashion since their conception is absorbing.

Technological Medicine in the New York Times

The New York Times Health section in tomorrow’s edition ran an excellent piece on Stanley Reiser’s “Technological Medicine” focusing on the uncomfortable tradeoff between technology and expectations at the clinic.

What Doctors are Missing

In his New York Review of Books article on the changes in medical culture, Jerome Groopman cites Stanley Reiser’s Technological Medicine.

Health Insurance and Competition

Getting to the root of our health-care woes: competition. Will a public option increase competition and lower costs? Are markets really dominated by single players, state by state? FOX has some interesting comments from Economist Earl Grinols in this story. Grinols published Health Care for Us All with us.

A Route to Sensible Health Care?

Americans have expressed their displeasure with House 3200 and the Senate health care bill because both contain bad economics and bad ideas. Economists such as Earl Grinnols are dismayed at the bills put forward.