Nortin Hadler knows backaches. For more than three decades as a physician and medical researcher, he has studied the experience of low back pain in people who are otherwise healthy. Hadler terms the low back pain that everyone suffers at one time or another "regional back pain." In this book, he addresses the history and treatment of the ailment with the healthy skepticism that has become his trademark, taking the "Hadlerian" approach to backaches and the backache treatment industry in order to separate the helpful from the hype.



Basing his critique on an analysis of the most current medical literature as well as his clinical experience, Hadler argues that regional back pain is overly medicalized by doctors, surgeons, and alternative therapists who purvey various treatment regimens. Furthermore, the design of workers' compensation, disability insurance, and other "health" schemes actually thwarts getting well. For the past half century, says Hadler, back pain and back pain-related disability have exacted a huge toll, in terms of pain, suffering, and financial cost. Stabbed in the Back addresses this issue at multiple levels: as a human predicament, a profound social problem, a medical question, and a vexing public-policy challenge. Ultimately, Hadler's insights illustrate how the state of the science can and should inform the art and practice of medicine as well as public policy. Stabbed in the Back will arm any reader with the insights necessary to make informed decisions when confronting the next episode of low back pain....

Are we all diseased time bombs? In "The Last Well Person" Dr Nortin Hadler argues that unfounded assertions, massaged data, and flagrant marketing have led to the medicalization of everyday life. He systematically builds the case that constant medical monitoring and unnecessary intervention are hazards to our health, severely reducing our quality of life. Sick with worry, we are a culture panicked by many illnesses - cardio-vascular disease, obesity, adult onset diabetes, fatigue, and breast cancer. Especially insidious, contends Hadler, is the misuse of longevity statistics in turning the difficulties experienced through a natural course of life, such as aging, back pain, and osteoporosis, into illnesses. He shows that the medical profession's current notion that such predicaments can be avoided is fatuous and self-serving. And he argues that most heart bypass surgery, mammography, cholesterol screening, and treatment to prevent prostate cancer should be avoided....