Too much medicine - Big Ideas

A recent lecture in the Sydney Ideas series was entitled Highlights of too much medicine: exploiting fear for the pursuit of profit.  Retired GP Iona Heath is concerned that, despite the best of intentions, modern medicine may be doing more harm than good. She examined and critiqued the health system and argued that greed and profit are at the centre of a self perpetuating cycle of fear, over diagnosis and over servicing.

ABC's Big Ideas recorded highlights of the talk and you can listen to it or download it at their website here.  You can also read an essay by Heath published in the BMJ late last year, entitled Role of fear in overdiagnosis and overtreatment—an essay by Iona Heath

Iona Heath's talk was presented by the School of Public Health, University of Sydney, Sydney Ideas and the Centre for Research in Evidence Based Practice - Bond University on 5th Aug 2015.