Until 19 thirties and 19 forties, medicine was really limited in what e could do. And am an enormous part of people's recovery was about optimizing the environment. But then something seemed to happen with the advent of antibiotics - more and more people began to be convinced that all you need to recover is the right prescription. So i would like to take the best of both perspectives. Keep keep the new modern drugs, which i use and prescribe regularly, and i think are wonder but also re engaged with that older pospective,. Which is about time, energy, respect, keel over the environment, and am setting achievable goals.
When people feel ill they go to the doctor for a diagnosis and what they hope will be the first step on the road to recovery. But former consultant neurologist Jules Montague argues that getting a diagnosis isn’t as simple as it sounds – they can be infected by medical bias, swayed by Big Pharma or political expedience, even refused because the condition isn’t officially recognised. In The Imaginary Patient Dr Montague meets those who have had to fight to get the right treatment.
The GP Gavin Francis knows only too well how desperate patients can feel with undiagnosed symptoms, but in his latest work, Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence he’s looking at the other end of the medical journey. He warns that getting better can take longer and be far more complex than most people understand.
The academic, Jennifer Jacquet, is interested in how far patients can be pawns in the wider power plays in the corporate world and Big Pharma. In The Playbook: How to Deny Science, Sell Lies, and Make a Killing in the Corporate World, she uses satire to expose the extraordinary lengths that corporations will go to quash inconvenient research, target scientists and forestall regulations.
Producer: Katy Hickman
This is the last show in the series; back on Monday 12th September.