What do you think?
Rate this book
Doctors: Triumphs, Trials and Tragedies
Distinguished, retired Australian surgeon, Dr John Wright, has written this fascinating account of some of the most publicized and notorious cases of medical malpractice reported in Australia and elsewhere. The revealed diversity of medical misconduct is staggering.
Cases such as Dr William McBride, Jayant Patel (Dr Death), Winifred Childs and Clarence Gluskie, both senior psychiatrists. Well known entrepreneur and socialite, Geoffrey Edelsten, cases in America and Britain such as Dr Jack Kevorkian, the world famous advocate of euthanasia.
This book also
* The damaging influence of pharmaceutical companies on doctors
* The debate between abortion and the right to life
* Cloning and medical experiments, including those conducted under the Nazi regime
* Dr Christian Barnard and heart transplant donors
* Legal lawsuits
* The violation of medical ethics in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, in Afghanistan and in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
Cases such as Dr William McBride, Jayant Patel (Dr Death), Winifred Childs and Clarence Gluskie, both senior psychiatrists. Well known entrepreneur and socialite, Geoffrey Edelsten, cases in America and Britain such as Dr Jack Kevorkian, the world famous advocate of euthanasia.
This book also
* The damaging influence of pharmaceutical companies on doctors
* The debate between abortion and the right to life
* Cloning and medical experiments, including those conducted under the Nazi regime
* Dr Christian Barnard and heart transplant donors
* Legal lawsuits
* The violation of medical ethics in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, in Afghanistan and in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
160 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 1, 2011
1 person is currently reading
About the author
John Wright
672 books41 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. ^1
John Wright is the author of the River Cottage Handbooks Mushrooms, Edible Seashore, Hedgerow and Booze and also The Naming of the Shrew, a book which explores the infuriating but fascinating topic of how and why plants, animals and fungi earn their Latin names. As well as writing for national publications, he often appears on the River Cottage series for Channel 4. He gives lectures on natural history and every year he takes around fifty 'forays', many at River Cottage HQ, showing people how to collect food - plants from the hedgerow, seaweeds and shellfish from the shore and mushrooms from pasture and wood. Over a period of nearly twenty-five years he has taken around six hundred such forays. Fungi are his greatest passion and he has thirty-five years' experience in studying them.
John Wright is a member of the British Mycological Society and a Fellow of the Linnaean Society.
John Wright is the author of the River Cottage Handbooks Mushrooms, Edible Seashore, Hedgerow and Booze and also The Naming of the Shrew, a book which explores the infuriating but fascinating topic of how and why plants, animals and fungi earn their Latin names. As well as writing for national publications, he often appears on the River Cottage series for Channel 4. He gives lectures on natural history and every year he takes around fifty 'forays', many at River Cottage HQ, showing people how to collect food - plants from the hedgerow, seaweeds and shellfish from the shore and mushrooms from pasture and wood. Over a period of nearly twenty-five years he has taken around six hundred such forays. Fungi are his greatest passion and he has thirty-five years' experience in studying them.
John Wright is a member of the British Mycological Society and a Fellow of the Linnaean Society.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 9, 2016
As a health professional, I was interested to hear what this retired cardiac surgeon had to say about medical malpractice. I hoped that, with the distance that often accompanies retirement, he would have been more objective...but no. This is a book about the medical profession closing ranks, about acknowledging that, well, there are a few bad apples in the barrel (like Patel, but don't forget all the good work he did!), and we're not all like that so give us a break. The bad guys for Wright are not the medical practitioners who kill and maim but the compensation lawyers and media. Nowhere in this book is there an ounce of sympathy for the patients and their families whose lives have been destroyed by these rogues and charlatans. Wright also gets stuck into the Health Care Complaints Commission and whenever he mentions its former head, Merrilyn Walton, he includes "not a medical doctor" in brackets after her name. Wright glosses over the collusion between medical officers and pharmaceutical companies and fails to mention the political influence of the AMA. Some sections such as the exposure of "sham peer review" attempt impartiality but the writing is confusing and too full of jargon to be appreciated by the average reader.
The various accounts of the cases are interesting from a voyeuristic perspective but there is little analysis of the ethical issues. I suppose I should have been alerted by the book's sub-title: "Triumphs, Trials and Tragedies" when it should have been "Mishaps, Misconduct and Malpractice" but the latter would have been an admission of guilt. Although the book is quite well-written as one would expect from an educated person, there is some careless editing. I suspect that when Jo Jo Publishing went into liquidation, Wright didn't get his royalties, and nor should he.
The various accounts of the cases are interesting from a voyeuristic perspective but there is little analysis of the ethical issues. I suppose I should have been alerted by the book's sub-title: "Triumphs, Trials and Tragedies" when it should have been "Mishaps, Misconduct and Malpractice" but the latter would have been an admission of guilt. Although the book is quite well-written as one would expect from an educated person, there is some careless editing. I suspect that when Jo Jo Publishing went into liquidation, Wright didn't get his royalties, and nor should he.
Displaying 1 of 1 review