• Foreword
• About the Author
• Preface

Part 1: The Science of Health

• Chapter 1: The Origins of Health
  • 1.1 What is Health?
  • 1.2 What Makes Humans Healthy?
  • 1.3 Historical Causes of Increased Life Expectancy
• Chapter 2: Current Patterns of Death and Disease
  • 2.1 Current Main Causes of Death
  • 2.2 Habits and Habitats Ancient and Modern
  • 2.3 Discordance Between Paleolithic and Modern Habits and Habitats
  • 2.4 What Is Healthcare For? The Preeminence of Behavioral Outcomes
• Chapter 3: Twelve Millennia of Changing Human Habits and Habitats
  • 3.1 Epidemiologic Transition
  • 3.2 Demographic Transition
  • 3.3 Transitions in Transition
  • 3.4 What Longevity Revolution?
  • 3.5 Are Populations Healthier Now As Well As Longer Lived?
  • 3.6 Morbidity: Compression, Expansion, or Equilibrium?
• Chapter 4: Biomedicine and Common Causes of Mortality and Morbidity
  • 4.1 Road Traffic Injury and Biomedicine: The Relevance of Policy
  • 4.2 Cardiovascular Disease: The Leading Global Cause of Mortality and Morbidity

Part 2: The Harm of Medicine

• Chapter 5: Medical Harm: What Is It and What Is the Extent?
  • 5.1 Medical Harm: What Is It?
  • 5.2 Serial Harm: Wayward Doctors and Malfunctioning Systems
  • 5.3 To Err Is Human: Harm Caused in the Routine Practice of Medicine
  • 5.4 To Err Is Human, but to Repeat the Error Is…Inevitable!
  • 5.5 Is Medicine Safe? Is It Getting Safer? The Evidence Says “No¿ to Both Questions
  • 5.6 Can Biomedical Healthcare Be Made Safe?
• Chapter 6: Sources of Harm: Prescription Drugs, Surgery, and Infections
  • 6.1 Harm from Prescription Drugs
  • 6.2 Harm from Surgery
  • 6.3 Healthcare-Associated Infection
  • 6.4 Multiple Drug Resistance
  • 6.5 Limiting Harm Due to Antibiotic Resistance
• Chapter 7: The Commercial Culture of Medicine
  • 7.1 The Myth of Safe and Effective Prescription Drugs
  • 7.2 Has Medicine Sold Out to Big Pharma?
  • 7.3 What Doctors Do (and Don’t Do) to Limit Harmful Commercialism in Clinical Practice
• Chapter 8: Big Pharma Entanglement with Biomedical Science
  • 8.1 Science in the Service of Industry: The Loss of Scientific Integrity in Biomedical Research
  • 8.2 Partners in Crime
  • 8.3 Manufacturing Bias in Scientific Research
  • 8.4 Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest in Biomedical Research
• Chapter 9: The Charms and Harms of Personalized Medicine
  • 9.1 Why Is Genomic Medicine Said to Be Personalized?
  • 9.2 What Is the Efficacy of Personalized Medicine Now and What Is It Likely to Be?
  • 9.3 To Screen or Not to Screen? Why Is That a Question?
  • 9.4 The Genome Is but One Piece of the Heterogeneous Mosaic of Life
  • 9.5 Genomic Personalized Medicine: Future Prospects and Legacy

Part 3: Achieving Optimal Health Sustainably

• Chapter 10: Healing Practices and Evidence-Based Medicine
  • 10.1 The Nature of Healing
  • 10.2 Evidence-Based Medicine
  • 10.3 Unwelcome Discoveries: Established Interventions That Don’t Work
• Chapter 11: Placebo and the Therapeutic Process
  • 11.1 The Placebo: Powerful, Powerless, or Passé?
  • 11.2 The Therapeutic Process
  • 11.3 Why Do Practitioners Use Interventions That Have No Specific Benefit?
• Chapter 12: Prevention and Control of Disease
  • 12.1 The Power of Prevention: Reorienting Healthcare
• Chapter 13: Associated Prevention Concepts and Models
  • 13.1 Ecological Models of Health and the Emergence of Health Activism
  • 13.2 Health Inequality and the Social Determinants of Health
  • 13.3 Health in All Policies
  • 13.4 Welfare Provision and the “Nanny¿ State: Nudge, Fudge, Smudge, Grudge, or Budge
  • 13.5 Why Do Successes in Prevention Not Attract the Accolades They Deserve?
  • 13.6 Why Has Healthcare Not Adopted Prevention as the Predominant Approach?
  • 13.7 What About the Ethical Imperative of Providing Help for Suffering Individuals?
  • 13.8 The Ethical Foundations of Prevention Over Cure
• Chapter 14: Optimal Healthcare: Risk Factor Reduction and Adjunctive Biomedical Intervention
  • 14.1 Program for Prevention and Control of Common Complex Diseases Incorporating Risk Factor Reduction and Adjunctive Biomedical Care
  • 14.2 Prevention of Disease Through Risk Factor Reduction to Reduce Disease Incidence
  • 14.3 Biomedical Intervention to Control Disease Progression
• Chapter 15: Mental Health
  • 15.1 Mental Disorder: The Triple Yoke of Big Pharma, Psychiatry, and the Biomedical Model
  • 15.2 Psychosocial Mental Health Promotion, Prevention, and Intervention

• Epilogue
• List of Acronyms
• Glossary
• Subject Index