Nortin M. Hadler – författare

A controversial skewering of how doctors and the medical industry turn healthy people into patients.

Hadler systematically builds the case that many medical interventions are hazardous to our health. Especially insidious is the misuse of longevity statistics in turning the difficulties experienced through a natural course of life, such as aging and osteoporosis, into illnesses. He argues that unfounded assertions and flagrant marketing have led to the medicalization of everyday life and he offers practical solutions on such topics as aging, obesity, adult onset diabetes, and back problems. In The Last Well Person Hadler addresses the tough questions about our health care, cutting through the medical white noise.

Nortin Hadler's clearly reasoned argument surmounts the cacophony of the health care debate. Hadler urges everyone to ask health care providers how likely it is that proposed treatments will afford meaningful benefits and he teaches how to actively listen to the answer. Each chapter of Worried Sick is an object lesson on the uses and abuses of common offerings, from screening tests to medical and surgical interventions. By learning to distinguish good medical advice from persuasive medical marketing, consumers can make better decisions about their personal health care and use that wisdom to inform their perspectives on health-policy issues.

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, he observes, 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.

In this extended essay, Nortin M. Hadler and Stephen P. Carter introduce a new approach to reforming the American health-care system-a plan they call the Universal Workers' Compensation Model (UWCM). Drawing on Hadler's expertise as a physician and Carter's as an attorney, the two have conceived the UWCM as a state-level alternative that would supersede current solutions debated at the national level. They begin by summarizing the history and present complexity and irrationality of America's health-insurance system. They then lay out the key concepts underlying the UWCM regime and the practical policy steps necessary to enact it. At the heart of the UWCM is a broader understanding of what constitutes worker's health, one grounded in scientific research and cognizant of the wide range of physical and mental illnesses that can afflict workers. The UWCM stipulates a single policy providing rational and reasoned recourse for universal risks: illness, injury, disability, and death. Presenting their ideas with precision in this 34-page pamphlet, Hadler and Carter intend to spark discussion among health-care providers, insurers, legislators, and everyday citizens about how we might move beyond the limits of the current debate toward new, truly effective solutions.

For those fortunate enough to reside in the developed world, death before reaching a ripe old age is a tragedy, not a fact of life. Although aging and dying are not diseases, older Americans are subject to the most egregious marketing in the name of ""successful aging"" and ""long life,"" as if both are commodities. In Rethinking Aging, Nortin M. Hadler examines health-care choices offered to aging Americans and argues that too often the choices serve to profit the provider rather than benefit the recipient, leading to the medicalization of everyday ailments and blatant overtreatment. Rethinking Aging forewarns and arms readers with evidence-based insights that facilitate health-promoting decision making.Over the past decade, Hadler has established himself as a leading voice among those who approach the menu of health-care choices with informed skepticism. Only the rigorous demonstration of efficacy is adequate reassurance of a treatment's value, he argues; if it cannot be shown that a particular treatment will benefit the patient, one should proceed with caution. In Rethinking Aging, Hadler offers a doctor's perspective on the medical literature as well as his long clinical experience to help readers assess their health-care options and make informed medical choices in the last decades of life. The challenges of aging and dying, he eloquently assures us, can be faced with sophistication, confidence, and grace.

In By the Bedside of the Patient, Nortin Hadler places current efforts to reform medical education--from the undergraduate level through residency programs and on to continuing medical education--in historical context. In doing so, he traces the evolution of medical school curricula, residency and fellowship programs, and the clinical practices they promoted. Hadler examines crucial junctures in history to locate the seeds for reform. Some believe that medical education and training should highlight literature, ethics, and culture, while others emphasize science and efficiency to abbreviate the time from entry to licensure. Neither of these approaches, Hadler argues, maintains or improves patient care, which should be at the core of medical education and practice. Hadler contends that most reform attempted thus far constitutes, at best, little more than a reshuffling of the basic curriculum and, at worst, an augmenting of medicine's predilection to measure, grade, and record. Examining generational changes in medical education, Hadler mines sixty years of training and practice to identify mistaken approaches and best practices. Ultimately, in the contemporary era of managed care, Hadler argues for a clinical practice that draws on the best available scientific knowledge, transmits the wisdom of experienced clinicians, reforges an empathetic relationship between physician and patient, and treats each patient as an individual--all centered on restoring the mandate to care.