Customer Reviews

Male Practice: How Doctors Manipulate Women

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the more they stay the same. The excellent doc's good book is about as subtle and complex as one of those bumper stickers that reads, "If You're Not Angry, You're Not Paying Attention." It's dated, too, like the prom dress from the eighties hanging at the back of my closet, and Dr. Mendelsohn was surely aware of the unavoidable illusion of obsolescence even as he wrote; it's less a work of theory than a book filled with concrete examples of medical wrongs. The book is worth a read, though, and I certainly wish I'd read it as a younger woman popping birth control pills and Ibuprofen and assuming them anodyne. At its heart is a wonderful philosophy: the human body is wonderfully designed and heals itself when given half a chance.

I'd argue with the stance that all physicians are money-grubbers anxious to get to the golf green; certainly our litigious society--and of course pharmaceutical industry--are to blame for the failings of medicine, and many good-hearted docs struggle to make a decent living while writing off a pretty sizeable chunk of salary to the caring for indigent and uninsured patients. And I'm not sure, but I think medical intervention is pretty equal-opportunity these days when it comes to the genders; perhaps women have only been more willing to claim victim status. Certainly psychotropic drugs are handed out to men, women & children alike these days, and I tend to see men in particular as victims of the dietary and chemical neutering brought on by the cholesterol myths. Hysterectomies may no longer be performed en masse, but one has only to look to commercials for "irritable bowel syndrome" to see the same masochistic spirit at work; then there's the new birth control pills that allow for three menstrual cycles a year--portrayed with a feminist spin. One wishes the doc was alive and well to write on.