Awakening Hippocrates: A Primer on Health, Poverty, and Global Service
http://www.100md.com
《新英格兰医药杂志》
"If there is a moral to my story — one that I could wish for the entire medical profession — it is transformation." In Awakening Hippocrates, Edward O'Neil calls for internationalizing a medical profession that is provincial in experience, training, outlook, practice, and priorities. In his view, physicians must engage their students, their careers, their research, and their industry on behalf of world health. Neither advocacy for public health nor medical compassion has the luxury of respecting borders. We neglect the 10-year-old prostitute dying of AIDS in Kenya at our peril; her disease, incubated in poverty, need, and a lack of public health surveillance, readily came to our shores. Polio, which was on the threshold of extinction until the medical community faltered in its zeal to end it, now jets around the world.
O'Neil reviews the global infrastructure through which poverty creates disease and through which inadequately funded, imperfectly organized agencies struggle to improve the health of the world's poor. The author identifies the major international health organizations and effectively reviews the controversy over the policies of the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the World Bank. His discussion of the pros and cons of the private health charities referred to as nongovernmental organizations is a gem that should be read by those contemplating volunteering for their first work overseas. His criticism of the arrogance of those groups that put evangelizing ahead of health care is on target, as is his recognition of the urgent need to research the efficacy of groups that work to create sustainable health care programs.
The tone is chatty and sometimes overblown. I winced at O'Neil's use of the phrase "stupid deaths." In addition, graphs could have effectively replaced many data-burdened paragraphs, a step that would have allowed readers to focus on what the author does best — tell stories and present arguments. The role of nurses is entirely neglected. A companion volume, A Practical Guide to Global Health Service (Chicago: American Medical Association, 2006), describes how to integrate international health care work into one's life or into medical education programs.
The last third of the book consists of short biographical sketches of international medical heroes, including Thomas Dooley, Father Bill Fryda, Paul Farmer (who wrote the book's foreword), Jim Yong Kim, Tom Durant, and Peter Allen. This section provides invaluable, encouraging role models for both physicians in training and those looking for midcourse career changes. O'Neil shows how these heroic clinicians engaged the world and were transformed and even healed by this engagement. The final chapter summarizes the themes of the book through the life and writings of the medical missionary Albert Schweitzer, who wrote, "I decided I would make my life my argument." Everything else is commentary.
Steven H. Miles, M.D.
Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55414
miles001@umn.edu(By Edward O'Neil, Jr. 502)
O'Neil reviews the global infrastructure through which poverty creates disease and through which inadequately funded, imperfectly organized agencies struggle to improve the health of the world's poor. The author identifies the major international health organizations and effectively reviews the controversy over the policies of the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the World Bank. His discussion of the pros and cons of the private health charities referred to as nongovernmental organizations is a gem that should be read by those contemplating volunteering for their first work overseas. His criticism of the arrogance of those groups that put evangelizing ahead of health care is on target, as is his recognition of the urgent need to research the efficacy of groups that work to create sustainable health care programs.
The tone is chatty and sometimes overblown. I winced at O'Neil's use of the phrase "stupid deaths." In addition, graphs could have effectively replaced many data-burdened paragraphs, a step that would have allowed readers to focus on what the author does best — tell stories and present arguments. The role of nurses is entirely neglected. A companion volume, A Practical Guide to Global Health Service (Chicago: American Medical Association, 2006), describes how to integrate international health care work into one's life or into medical education programs.
The last third of the book consists of short biographical sketches of international medical heroes, including Thomas Dooley, Father Bill Fryda, Paul Farmer (who wrote the book's foreword), Jim Yong Kim, Tom Durant, and Peter Allen. This section provides invaluable, encouraging role models for both physicians in training and those looking for midcourse career changes. O'Neil shows how these heroic clinicians engaged the world and were transformed and even healed by this engagement. The final chapter summarizes the themes of the book through the life and writings of the medical missionary Albert Schweitzer, who wrote, "I decided I would make my life my argument." Everything else is commentary.
Steven H. Miles, M.D.
Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55414
miles001@umn.edu(By Edward O'Neil, Jr. 502)