Synopsis
In his rousing and inspiring style, John Robbins, author of the acclaimed best-seller Diet for a New America, turns his attention to the national debate on health care. Calling for nothing short of a revolution in the basic beliefs on which health care is based, he convincingly demonstrates the enormous human and financial costs of the polarization of conventional and alternative medicine.
Although Americans spend far more money on medical care than any other people in the world, many of us cannot afford the most basic coverage; we rank 25th among the world's nations in infant mortality; the toll in human suffering from degenerative disease continues to rise; the danger from virulent communicable diseases is increasing daily; and, meanwhile, women are growing increasingly frustrated with the care they receive from a male-dominated system.
There are answers to these problems, and Reclaiming Our Health presents a brilliant, refreshing, and uplifting new vision of what health care in America might be as well as practical solutions for us as individuals and for a health-care system gone awry.
Reviews
Robbins, heir to the ice cream fortune and author of the best-selling Diet for a New America (Stillpoint, 1987), seeks to analyze the American healthcare system and posit a more effective model. He succeeds in his first goal and fails in his second. Robbin rails against the male-dominated medical industry and contrasts its "dominator" model to a "partnership" model, which is rather fuzzily defined. Most of his book focuses on women's health issues, primarily the medicalization of normal processes such as childbirth and menopause, none of which is particularly new. Alternately amusing and annoying are Robbins's frequent exclamations along the lines of "Wow, how awful! I never realized it was this bad for you gals!" His book includes a resource guide, and the copious footnotes, which read like a women's studies syllabus, cite a wide array of sources whose validity is sometimes questionable. But Robbins is not a doctor, and his book is intended as a popular, rather than a scientific, work. Anticipated high demand from the New Age, alternative medicine, and feminist communities makes this title essential for public libraries.?Eris Weaver, Marin Inst. for the Prevention of Alcohol & Other Drug Problems, San Rafael, Cal.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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