The Laws of Medicine: Field Notes from an Uncertain Science (TED Books) 1st Edition, Kindle Edition
Siddhartha Mukherjee (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |


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Over a decade ago, when Siddhartha Mukherjee was a young, exhausted, and isolated medical resident, he discovered a book that would forever change the way he understood the medical profession. The book, The Youngest Science, forced Dr. Mukherjee to ask himself an urgent, fundamental question: Is medicine a “science”? Sciences must have laws—statements of truth based on repeated experiments that describe some universal attribute of nature. But does medicine have laws like other sciences?
Dr. Mukherjee has spent his career pondering this question—a question that would ultimately produce some of most serious thinking he would do around the tenets of his discipline—culminating in The Laws of Medicine. In this important treatise, he investigates the most perplexing and illuminating cases of his career that ultimately led him to identify the three key principles that govern medicine.
Brimming with fascinating historical details and modern medical wonders, this important book is a fascinating glimpse into the struggles and Eureka! moments that people outside of the medical profession rarely see. Written with Dr. Mukherjee’s signature eloquence and passionate prose, The Laws of Medicine is a critical read, not just for those in the medical profession, but for everyone who is moved to better understand how their health and well-being is being treated. Ultimately, this book lays the groundwork for a new way of understanding medicine, now and into the future.
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"The prose is lovely, often witty, always clear.... a fast and informative read." (Booklist)
“This is a fantastic book.” (A Bookish Type)
“What he writes is important, and he does so in an elegant,engaging fashion. This is a moving, deeply humane book.” – Los Angeles Review of Books
Review
"This mininarrative, packed with complex ideas translated into easily accessible language and an engaging style, leaves the readers time to ponder the author's ideas at greater length, and the result is a fascinating and illuminating trek through a beautiful mind. A splendid exploration of how medicine might be transformed." (Kirkus (starred))
"The prose is lovely, often witty, always clear.... a fast and informative read." (Booklist)
“This is a fantastic book.” (A Bookish Type)
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B00WFOQ20Q
- Publisher : Simon & Schuster/ TED; 1st edition (October 13, 2015)
- Publication date : October 13, 2015
- Language : English
- File size : 4273 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Not Enabled
- Print length : 97 pages
- Lending : Not Enabled
- Best Sellers Rank: #113,402 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #10 in Physician & Patient Healing
- #11 in Physician & Patient Diagnosis
- #11 in Physician & Patient Medical Ethics
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Siddhartha Mukherjee is a cancer physician and researcher. He is an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University and a staff cancer physician at the CU/NYU Presbytarian Hospital. A former Rhodes scholar, he graduated from Stanford University, University of Oxford (where he received a PhD studying cancer-causing viruses) and from Harvard Medical School. His laboratory focuses on discovering new cancer drugs using innovative biological methods. Mukherjee trained in cancer medicine at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute of Harvard Medical School and was on the staff at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He has published articles and commentary in such journals as Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, Neuron and the Journal of Clinical Investigation and in publications such as the New York Times and the New Republic. His work was nominated for Best American Science Writing, 2000 (edited by James Gleick). He lives in Boston and New York with his wife, Sarah Sze, an artist, and with his daughter, Leela.
His author website is www.siddharthamukherjee.me
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1) A strong intuition is much more powerful than a weak test.
2) For every perfect medical experiment, there is a perfect human bias
If these two laws were persistently applied, medicine would cost us much less not only in money, but also in despair and suffering.
I am among those who believe that lab test have been used more often to obfuscate medical ignorance than to help patients. And medical experiments, especially with expensive drugs and expensive medical procedures are much prone to enrich doctors and ameliorate Big Pharma bottom line than to help patients.
After reading this short book everyone will the able to better understand why much of what we hear about expensive drugs and sophisticated medical procedure are injuring us, killing us and making us poorer. Everyone will also understand why intuition is an attribute so necessary in the art of healing.
I recommend this book for everyone who thinks good medicine means tens of expensive lab tests followed by a long prescription of modern and expensive drugs. For these people, this book might save their lives. Or, at least save them big bucks.