“The cigarette is the deadliest artifact in the history of human civilization.” Explores how the cigarette came to be the most widely used drug on the planet, with six trillion sticks sold per year, and shows how tobacco manufacturers conspire to block r

(HEALTH * SMOKING ABOLITION? * TOBACCO INDUSTRY)

The author of guides to schizophrenia and manic depression chronicles a disastrous swing in the balance of civil rights that has resulted in numerous violent episodes and left a vulnerable population of mentally ill people homeless and victimized. In the aftermath of the 2011 shooting in Tucson, Torrey outlines what needs to be done to reverse this accelerating trend.

(HEALTH * MENTALLY ILL * MENTAL HEALTH POLICY)

Challenges widely held assumptions about the causes and consequences of the “obesity epidemic,” and questions to what extent prevention efforts are sensible, efficacious, or ethical. We produce cheap, over-processed food to support a political economy of bulimia – one that promotes consumption while also insisting in thinness. Promoting food that is local, organic and farm fresh can’t be a remedy for obesity; it will reinforce class and race inequalities and neglect other possible explanations of the rise in obesity, including environmental toxins.

(HEALTH * OBESITY * FOOD/AGRICULTURE)

Provides succinct and balanced questions about marijuana in America: Who uses it? What are its risks? What are the benefits – medical and otherwise – of marijuana use? How would a legal marijuana industry be organized and how would it operate? Could taxing legal marijuana fill the gaps in state budgets? What would be the effects of legalization?, What would the federal government do if one state legalized marijuana? [Also see Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know by Mark A. R. Kleiman et al. (Oxford UP, July 2011, 240p).]

(MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION * DRUG LEGALIZATION)

Since the discovery of DNA, genetic testing has rapidly improved the diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as Huntington’s, cystic fibrosis, breast cancer, and Alzheimer’s. With this knowledge come difficult decisions for many people. Discusses quandaries such as 1) whether to be tested; 2) whether to disclose genetic risks to parents, siblings, spouses, offspring, friends, doctors, insurers, employers, and schools; 3) what treatments, if any, to pursue; 4) whether to have children, adopt, screen embryos, or abort; and 5) whether to participate in genetic communities.

(HEALTH * GENETIC TESTING)

Thirty years ago, it was estimated that less than 5% of the population had an anxiety disorder. Today, some estimates are over 50%, a tenfold increase. Psychiatry has largely generated this “epidemic” by inflating many natural fears into psychiatric disorders and by over-prescribed anxiety-reducing drugs. Argues strongly against the tendency to call any distressing condition a “mental disorder”. [Also see How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder by Horwitz and Wakefield.]

(HEALTH * MENTAL HEALTH * PSYCHIATRY QUESTIONED * ANXIETY DISORDERS)

Identifies four problems in contemporary psychology: 1) indifference to the setting in which observations are gathered, including age, class, and cultural background of participants and the procedure that provides the evidence; 2) the habit of basing inferences on single measures rather than patterns of measures; 3) defining mental illnesses by symptoms independent of their origin; and 4) treatment of mental disorders with drugs and forms of psychotherapy that are nonspecific to the diagnosed illness.

(MENTAL HEALTH * PSYCHOLOGY IN CRISIS * SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY)

Overviews stem cells: what they are, what scientists do with them, what stem cell therapies are available today, and how they might be used in the future. Distinguishes between embryonic stem cells, which exist only in laboratory cultures, and tissue-specific stem cells, which exist in our bodies, and discusses how they might be used in the future to treat such illnesses as diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, spinal trauma, and retinal degradation. Despite important advances, “clinical applications of stem cells are still in their infancy.”

(HEALTH * SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY * STEM CELLS)

Two important figures in health care policy analysis cover the future of Medicare, universal health insurance, conflicts of interest among physicians, regulators, and patients, and more – in the wake of Obama’s healthcare reform.

(HEALTH * HEALTHCARE IN THE U.S.)

Cancer has become a leading cause of death and disability and a serious yet unforeseen challenge to health systems in low- and middle-income countries. A protracted and polarized cancer transition is underway, fueling a concentration of preventable risk, illness, suffering, and death among poor populations. Closing this cancer divide is an equity imperative. Presents strategies to strengthen health systems by innovation in delivery, pricing, procurement, finance, knowledge-building, and leadership. Provides a guide for developing responses to the challenge of cancer and other chronic illnesses and summarizes the recent work of the Global Task Force on Expanding Access to Cancer Care and Control in Developing Countries.

(HEALTH * CANCER DIVIDE * DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: GLOBAL TASK FORCE ON CANCER CARE)