More Harm Than Good : What Your Doctor May Not Tell You about Common Treatments and Procedures

Patients today expect their every last ache and pain to be immediately cataloged and cured. They want the pill they just saw advertised, or the latest, greatest procedure. Many doctors, reluctant to tell patients that waiting or doing nothing is often better, are all too willing to accommodate. As a result, we are becoming a nation of over-diagnosed and over-treated people. But how can we know how much medicine is good medicine? And how do we know which treatments might actually work?

In More Harm Than Good, Michael Bellomo and Dr. Alan Zelicoff offer a compelling look at medical care today and explore how common conditions like prostate cancer, heart disease, and diabetes are being over-treated, wasting billions of healthcare dollars and producing less than ideal, if not detrimental results. The authors arm readers with the facts and questions they need to better discuss options with their doctors, and examine the way doctors select treatments in the first place.

Based on solid scientific and medical research as well as interviews with surgeons, internists, and general practitioners, More Harm Than Good will empower readers to make better health decisions. Revealing and impeccably researched, this is a revolutionary book that will change how we look at being sick.

Alan Zelicoff, M. D. (Albuquerque, NM) is a physician and physicist. He has testified before Congress on public health issues and published op-eds in The Washington Postand The Wall Street Journal.

Michael Bellomo (Burlingame, CA) is the author of The Stem Cell Divide(978-0-8144-0881-0). Together, they are the authors of Microbe (978-0-8144-0865-0).