medicine

Before Covid-19, public health programs constituted only 2.5 percent of all US health spending, with the other 97.5 percent going towards the larger health care system. In fact, the United States spends on average $11,000 per citizen per year on health care, but only $286 per person on public health. It seems that Americans value health care, the medical care of individuals, over public health, the well-being of collections of people. In "Me vs. Us," primary care doctor and public health advocate Michael Stein takes a hard, insightful look at the larger questions behind American health and health care.

Where does one go without health insurance, when turned away by hospitals, clinics, and doctors? "The People’s Hospital," physician Ricardo Nuila’s debut, follows the lives of five uninsured Houstonians as their struggle for survival leads them to a hospital where insurance comes second to genuine care. Each patient eventually lands at Ben Taub, the county hospital where Dr. Nuila has worked for over a decade.

Before Covid-19, public health programs constituted only 2.5 percent of all US health spending, with the other 97.5 percent going towards the larger health care system. In fact, the United States spends on average $11,000 per citizen per year on health care, but only $286 per person on public health. It seems that Americans value health care, the medical care of individuals, over public health, the well-being of collections of people. In "Me vs. Us," primary care doctor and public health advocate Michael Stein takes a hard, insightful look at the larger questions behind American health and health care.

Renowned surgeon and historian Ira Rutkow has five decades of experience and has now written a remarkable history of surgery’s development—spanning the Stone Age to the present day—blending meticulous medical studies with lively and skillful storytelling. The new book is: "Empire of the Scalpel."

Ismail Ali, the director of policy and advocacy for MAPS, joins The Best of Our Knowledge to explain the legal and regulatory framework around psychedelic research.

Renowned surgeon and historian Ira Rutkow has five decades of experience and has now written a remarkable history of surgery’s development—spanning the Stone Age to the present day—blending meticulous medical studies with lively and skillful storytelling. The new book is: "Empire of the Scalpel." There are not many events in life that can be as simultaneously life-frightening and life-saving as a surgical operation. Yet, in America, tens-of-millions of major surgical procedures are performed annually but few of us pause to consider the magnitude of these figures because we have such inherent confidence in surgeons. And, despite passionate debates about healthcare and the endless fascination with surgical procedures, most of us have no idea how surgeons came to be because the story of surgery has never been fully told. Ira Rutkow is a general surgeon and historian of American medicine. He also holds a doctorate of public health from Johns Hopkins University. I spoke with him recently about how he came to write the history of surgery.

Pervasive violence against hospitals, patients, doctors and other health workers as become a horrifically common feature of modern war. These relentless attacks destroy lives and the capacity of health systems to attend to those in need. Inaction to stop this violence undermines long standing values and laws designed to ensure that sick and wounded people receive care. In "Perilous Medicine: The Struggle to Protect Health Care from the Violence of War," Leonard Rubenstein, a human rights lawyer who has investigated atrocities against health workers around the world, offers an account of the dangers health workers face during conflict and the legal political and moral struggle to protect them.

Gregory Zuckerman's new book "A Shot to Save the World: The Inside Story of the Life-or-Death Race for a COVID-19 Vaccine" (Portfolio) takes readers inside the top-secret laboratories, corporate clashes, and high-stakes government negotiations that led to effective shots.

In her book, "The Plant Hunter: A Scientist's Quest for Nature's Next Medicines" (Viking), Dr. Cassandra Quave weaves together science, botany, and memoir to tell us the extraordinary story of her own journey. Traveling by canoe, ATV, mule, airboat, and on foot, she has conducted field research in the flooded forests of the remote Amazon, the murky swamps of southern Florida, the rolling hills of central Italy, isolated mountaintops in Albania and Kosovo, and volcanic isles arising out of the Mediterranean—all in search of natural compounds, long-known to traditional healers, that could help save us all from the looming crisis of untreatable superbugs.

The body is a source of pleasure and of pain, at once hopelessly vulnerable and radiant with power. In her ambitious sixth book, Olivia Laing charts an…