Nortin M. Hadler > Quotes

“To “stand there” at the bedside of a patient who is faced with death from cancer is anathema for oncologists.”
― Nortin M. Hadler, Nortin Hadler's Healthcare Trilogy: Includes Worried Sick, Stabbed in the Back, and Rethinking Aging

“Ours is an increasingly complex society that, having
reached something of a zenith in the 1960s and 1970s, has been progressively
devaluing human capital. More and more, people are finding their
life courses challenging, so challenging that such predicaments as the next
backache are more likely to prove “chronic” and disability schemes more
likely to offer the only option.”
― Nortin M. Hadler, Stabbed in the Back: Confronting Back Pain in an Overtreated Society

“No one should be screened for any disease, ever, unless the test is accurate, the result has meaningful predictive value, and there is something meaningful to be done if the test is positive.”
― Nortin M. Hadler, The Last Well Person: How to Stay Well Despite the Health-Care System

“When the high-functioning octogenarian declines, it is because her or his time is nearing. When”
― Nortin M. Hadler, Nortin Hadler's Healthcare Trilogy: Includes Worried Sick, Stabbed in the Back, and Rethinking Aging

“The majority of the “health-care dollar” expended in the United States does not benefit patients. So many highticket items that are trumpeted as the triumphs of U.S. medicine are little more than a scam.16 Spine surgery for regional low back pain has earned this ignominy. The first priority for reform in the care of the health of the American is to stop underwriting the profitably useless. We have the science to do so.”
― Nortin M. Hadler, Stabbed in the Back: Confronting Back Pain in an Overtreated Society

“Why anyone would still believe that the physical demands of tasks are the critical factor in disablement from regional low back pain is troubling. No one yet has been able to modify the physical demands of tasks to decrease disablement despite continued efforts. It is not the task in the modern workplace that is limiting; it is the panoply of personal and other psychosocial factors that compromises coping with regional backache and thereby predisposes one to suffer the back pain as disabling.”
― Nortin M. Hadler, Stabbed in the Back: Confronting Back Pain in an Overtreated Society

“Oncologists are pawns in an industry dedicated to developing drugs and assaying their effectiveness. Oncology is big business.”
― Nortin M. Hadler, Nortin Hadler's Healthcare Trilogy: Includes Worried Sick, Stabbed in the Back, and Rethinking Aging

“Eighty-five (± a little bit) appears to be the programmed life expectancy for our species. I”
― Nortin M. Hadler, Nortin Hadler's Healthcare Trilogy: Includes Worried Sick, Stabbed in the Back, and Rethinking Aging

“To restate the mantra, one never wants to submit to screening unless the test is accurate, the disease is important, and we can do something about it.”
― Nortin M. Hadler, Nortin Hadler's Healthcare Trilogy: Includes Worried Sick, Stabbed in the Back, and Rethinking Aging

“When death supervenes, it is because it is her or his time. That is the real proximate cause of death. It”
― Nortin M. Hadler, Nortin Hadler's Healthcare Trilogy: Includes Worried Sick, Stabbed in the Back, and Rethinking Aging

“Human capital denotes more than a meritocracy. Valuing human capital requires a philosophy of life that tolerates lapses, empathizes with vicissitudes, and countenances failure. Valuing human capital recruits the mind of the poet as much as that of the economist. With this as my lantern, regional low back pain as the object lesson, and a good deal of humility, I will suggest a transformation from a welfare state to an enabling state that values human capital. For this transformation to stand a chance, some of the current fortress institutions need to be assaulted.”
― Nortin M. Hadler, Stabbed in the Back: Confronting Back Pain in an Overtreated Society

“Most fragility fractures are a disease without a specific illness; they are part of normal aging.”
― Nortin M. Hadler, Nortin Hadler's Healthcare Trilogy: Includes Worried Sick, Stabbed in the Back, and Rethinking Aging