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. Treatments that are effective in controlled test settings can spark unpredictable outcomes in the real world, where each new therapy can alter the body irreversibly, blur the line between treatment and disease effects, and provoke further prescriptions.
In Medicine’s Labyrinth, physician historian Robert Aronowitz examines the challenging decisions posed by the widespread use of so many medical interventions. Through a critical reading of 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 last 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 experience and 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 it must be rebuilt.