The Elusive Diagnosis

Doctors, and the Diagnosis Crisis 
by Alexandra Sifferlin (2026)

This is an interesting and important book for all health care professionals including students.  Good Reads says: "A compelling, necessary, and timely investigation into the diagnosis crisis in the American healthcare system, from the patients living with undiagnosed illnesses, to the doctors searching for answers, and what their quests reveal about our flawed medical system

My notes can be found on GoogleDocs. 

There are a number of similar books books on the market; but this is the latest and it's well-written and informative.

Poisoned: How a Crime-Busting Prosecutor Turned His Medical Mystery into a Crusade for Environmental Victims

 by Alan Bell (2017)

Amazon Synopsis:

After years of prosecuting hard-core criminals, rising legal star Alan Bell took a private sector job in South Florida's newest skyscraper. Suddenly, he suffered such bizarre medical symptoms, doctors suspected he'd been poisoned by the Mafia. Bell's rapidly declining health forced him to flee his glamorous Miami life to a sterile "bubble" in the remote Arizona desert.

As his career and marriage dissolved, Bell pursued medical treatments in a race against time, hoping to stay alive and raise his young daughter, his one desperate reason to keep going. He eventually discovered he wasn't poisoned by a criminal, but by his office building. His search for a cure led him to discover the horrifying truth: his tragedy was just the tip of the iceberg. Millions of people fall ill and die each year because of toxic chemical exposures - without knowing they're at risk.

Stunned by what he discovered, Bell chose to fight back, turning his plight into an opportunity. Despite his precarious health, he began collaborating with scientists dedicated to raising awareness about this issue. Soon, he also found himself drawn back into the legal field, teaming up with top lawyers fighting for those who had already fallen ill.

Both a riveting medical mystery and a cautionary tale, this book puts a human face on the hidden truths behind toxic dangers assaulting us in our everyday environments - and offers practical ways to protect ourselves and our children. 

We hear one side of the Multiple Chemical Sensitivity story here.  This is a captivating book, but I recognize there are doubters about MCS out there.  Reader, keep an open mind!

 

Magic Pill

The extra extraordinary benefits and the disturbing risks
of the new weight-loss drugs. 

by Johann Hari. (2024)

 

 

 

Johann Hari has the gift of making a complex subject clear 

and easy to read about.  This book is no exception.  GLP-1 

drugs highlight the brain-gut inter-relationship.  They have
taken the world by storm but in reality they are a fix to
changes in how and what human populations consume.  

Most of this has taken place over the past 50 years.

At the outset, Hari admits that he had an eating disorder, 

especially in relation to KFC. Rigorous scientific studies
have shown that there is a new generation of drugs, working
in a completely new way, that causes people who use them to
lose between five and 24% of their body weight. For people 

with severe obesity it is the Holy Grail. The maker of the most
popular of these drugs, Novo Nordisk, is the most valuable
company in  the European Union at present. 

 

This is a fascinating book. You can read my extensive notes
on Google Docs.

 

The Golden Age

The Golden Age (2014) is a novel by the Australian author Joan London.

Frank and Elsa meet at a rehabilitation clinic in suburban Perth in the early 1950s when they were ~ 12 years old. Both have been stricken with polio, and Frank is a Jewish refugee from Hungary. The novel follows the relationship between Frank and Elsa at the rehab center.

Polio is like love, Frank says, after many decades.  Years later, when you think you have recovered, it comes back."

 This is a quiet, beautiful book. It was a gift to read it. 

 

The Lost Art Of Dying

"The Lost Art of Dying" (2020) by L.S. Dugdale is an insightful exploration of life, mortality, and the human psyche’s relationship with death. Inspired by historical wisdom, Dugdale revives the medieval ars moriendi tradition, a concept that views dying as an art, complete with preparatory practices to facilitate a good death. This book is both a philosophical treatise and practical guide, compelling readers to question modern medicine's approach to prolonging life at all costs. Dugdale, a physician herself, uniquely balances the medical with the existential, urging a return to conversations about death in order to better enjoy and appreciate life.

Her writing is thoughtful and compassionate, providing a fresh perspective on a topic often shrouded in fear and avoidance. Rather than focusing solely on medical solutions, she emphasizes the importance of community, spiritual reflection, and acceptance. This book encourages a paradigm shift towards understanding dying as a natural part of the human experience, prompting readers to live more fully. "The Lost Art of Dying" is a poignant, inspiring read for anyone seeking deeper understanding of life’s final journey.

Second Life

Second Life: Having a child in the digital age
By Amanda Hess (2025)

This was an interview with the author on Fresh Air, May 7, 2025.  These are my notes from the podcast.

This book addresses how technology has changed having a baby. It takes to control our relationship to our own health, our children, etc.
Blame and guilt are baked into the medical system.
With regularity, patients encounter pseudoscience on the Internet. Every weirdness is out there.

Hess describes a website, Flow, that purports to help women through gestation. It has hundreds of millions of users and yet it provides mis- and disinformation.

What spurred her to write her book was that in the early third trimester of her first pregnancy her baby was diagnosed with Beckwith-Wiedemann  syndrome.

She discovered that disability can be divorced from the human side. Her experiences give insight into the patient’s mind. The Internet preys on vulnerable people. It creates a context for patient expectations.

Our culture highly stigmatizes disability. Questions are raised about the ethics and business of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PIGD).
See the book Mercies in Disguise by Gina Kolata
There are aspects of eugenics in all of this.

Today, for those who can afford it, their babies are always being monitored by machines, such as the the “robotic crib” — Snoo Bassinet (discount price ~ $1200 and up).  Surveillance is now confused with care. There is an intrusive element to all of this.  For sure there are some positive features, but the negatives may outweigh them.

Hess sees Internet parent groups as a positive feature of the web.

Technology is not being developed for the betterment of mankind; it is being developed to drive profits for individuals and companies.

This book explores how the digital age impacts on pregnancy and child rearing. It’s an introduction to thinking about how the Internet impacts all aspects of our lives and health.

Mercies in Disguise

Mercies in Disguise: A Story of Hope, a Family's Genetic Destiny, and the Science That Rescued Them
By Gina Kolata (2018)

If your family had a disease that caused significant illness or early death, would you want to find out if you carried the fatal gene?

This remarkable book follows the Baxley family of Hartsdale, South Carolina. It is a medical mystery, beautifully told by Gina. Kolata. The family harbors a mutant gene that causes a progressive neurological disease (GSS). There is science, there is genetics, there is medical ethics, there are questions of faith, and how individuals in their families can react to this life altering realities.

 In Mercies in Disguise, acclaimed New York Times science reporter tells the story of the Baxleys, an almost archetypal family in a small town in South Carolina. A proud and determined clan, many of them doctors, they are struck one by one with an inscrutable illness. They finally discover the cause of the disease after a remarkable sequence of events that many saw as providential. Meanwhile, science, progressing for a half a century along a parallel track, had handed the Baxleys a resolution―not a cure, but a blood test that would reveal who had the gene for the disease and who did not. And science would offer another dilemma―fertility specialists had created a way to spare the children through an expensive process.

A work of narrative nonfiction,     this is the story of a family that took matters into its own hands when the medical world abandoned them. It’s a story of a family that had to deal with unspeakable tragedy and yet did not allow it to tear them apart. And it is the story of a young woman―Amanda Baxley―who faced the future head on, determined to find a way to disrupt her family’s destiny.