The Betrayal of Health - Hardcover

Beasley, Joseph

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0812918975 ISBN 13: 9780812918977

Publisher: Crown, 1991

Analyzes the state of the American health care system and condemns modern medicine's failure to respond to growing social and health crises

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About the Author:

Dr. Joseph D. Beasley, M.D. is a board-certified clinical physician, who was also certified by examination in 1986 as a specialist in Addiction Medicine as defined by the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM). During the past twenty years he has lead both inpatient and outpatient bio-behavioral treatment teams who have been responsible for the inpatient and outpatient diagnosis and treatment of more than twenty thousand patients with chemical dependency and/or acute psychiatric conditions. He has also served as a professor and department head at Harvard and Tulane Universities, Dean of the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University, Chairman of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and as a member of the National Commission on Population Growth and the American Future.

Currently Dr. Beasley is directing a non-profit international internet project concerning with providing the latest scientific information on Alcoholism and Chemical Dependency prevention and treatment to both professionals and lay people. He is preparing the fourth edition of Diagnosing and Managing Chemical Dependency, a book for professionals and lay people in the addiction fields which will be published both in text form and on the internet in the year 2001. He serves as a consultant advisor to many private and non-profit organizations. He continues his studies and consultation activities in family planning, nutrition, and the organization and design of health delivery systems.

From Kirkus Reviews:

An argument for a systems-approach to health that looks at ``the full spectrum of ills that are afflicting our planet, from the destruction of the seas and rain forests to the compromising of the human immune system.'' Beasley is director of Bard College Center's Institute of Health Policy and Practice. A distillation of a hefty 300,000-word Kellogg Foundation report (1989) on some ten years of Beasley's research, the result is a readable text that nevertheless still often overwhelms with disturbing data on the state of our planet and our species. Beasley examines the factors whose interaction largely determines our health: genetics, environment, nutrition--and lifestyle, which includes level of stress, physical activity, psychological attitudes, chemical dependencies, sexual behavior, exposure to violence, and patterns of sleeping, eating, and working. He then takes a critical look at the limitations of modern medicine's symptom/disease-oriented approach to illness, recommending instead a return to a more broad-based ``naturalistic'' approach to health, in which medical schools would provide sophisticated training in nutrition, environmental impacts, toxicology, addictions, and counseling of patients in order to prevent disease, not simply to diagnose and treat it. Beasley concludes with recommendations that individuals take certain steps to ensure good health--eliminating or reducing harmful habits, becoming knowledgeable about self-care, avoiding toxic substances in the environment, and improving nutrition. A disheartening look at the hazards to health we all face, and an urgent appeal to the medical community--and to the individual--to take action to deal with this sea of troubles. -- Copyright �1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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