The Tyranny of Health: Doctors and the Regulation of Lifestyle

Michael Fitzpatrick

thg 1 2002 · Routledge

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Topical and controversial The Tyranny of Health exposes the dangers of the explosion of health awareness for both patients and doctors, using straightforward language to explain the latest health statistics and research findings. Michael Fitzpatrick, a full-time inner-city GP, argues from his day-to-day experience in the surgery that health propaganda is having a very unhealthy effect on the nation. Patients are made unnecessarily anxious as a result of health scares which have greatly exaggerated the risks of everyday activities such as eating beef, sunbathing and having sex. Doctors no longer seem content with treating disease but are encouraged by the government to tell people how to live more and more aspects of their lives.

Michael Fitzpatrick concludes that doctors should stop trying to make people virtuous. He argues that we need to establish a clear boundary between the worlds of medicine and politics, so that doctors can concentrate on treating the sick - and leave the well alone.