Book/Media Review: Seeking Sickness: Medical Screening and the Misguided Hunt for Disease

Abstract

Seeing Sickness takes us inside the world of medical screening, where well-meaning practitioners and a profit-motivated industry offer to save our lives by exploiting our fears. Author Alan Cassels writes that promoters of screening overcompromise on its benefits and downplay its harms. If you're facing screening for breast or prostate cancer, high cholesterol, or low testosterone, someone is about to turn you into a patient. You need to ask yourself one question: Am I ready for all the things that could go wrong? [From back cover]. Foreword; Prologue: Seek and Ye Shall Find; One: The Whole Body Scan; Two: Screening for Eyeball Pressure; Three: Cholesterol Screening, Syndrome X, and Heart Scanning; Four: PSA Testing; Five: Mammography Screening; Six: Colon and Cervix Screening; Seven: Mental Health Screening; Eight: Self-Screening for Disease; Nine: Lung Screening for Cancer and COPD; Ten: Bone Screening; Eleven: Gene Screening; Epilogue: A Conversation Starter when Facing Screening; Bibliography; Endnotes; Acknowledgements; Index.