RxISK has just launched a writer’s co-operative – Samizdat-Health and Samizdat House – for non-fiction and fiction publications falling outside the boundaries of the sanctioned conversation on issues thrown up by health.
Launching a new set of imprints like this has become necessary, because publishing about treatment-related difficulties has become increasingly problematic in a risk-averse commercial and even academic publishing climate.
As the provision of medicine and the demand for unfettered access to medical treatments has stepped into the void once reserved for spiritual belief and moral identity, mainstream media and even university publishing houses have become reluctant to go near anything that might suggest that a life consuming the sacraments of modern medicine might not be a recipe for salvation.
Samizdat launched with a manifesto in English, French, and Spanish:
- The Decapitation of Care. A short history of the rise and fall of healthcare.
Print https://www.amazon.com/dp/1777056500
Kindle https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084G8PTQX
- La santé décapitée. Brève histoire de l’avènement et de la chute du système de soins
Print https://www.amazon.com/dp/1777056527
Kindle https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084G8ZFW9
- La decapitación del cuidado. Una breve historia del auge y caída de la atención médica
Print: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1777056543
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084V9N93B/
There are few books published in multiple languages like this, all at the same time. It would be wonderful to break this “triplet record” at some point soon.
There is also a new Samizdat website, which features some early reviews of The Decapitation of Care. The website, like the co-operative, aims at participation. We are looking for reviewers. You do not need to agree with the book’s contents to send in a review. Discussion about some of the trickiest issues in all of our lives is more important than back-slapping.
We are above all looking for authors to join the co-operative, and for translators of books already published or in the pipeline.
Samizdat is not a business. It’s not a place where authors will find their views or work being trimmed or packaged according to data as to what sells. We see ourselves as part of a leaderless movement that seizes tools at our disposal to present unmediated subject matter, including a large community of patients with forbidden questions and survival stories that have not been given a forum.
Patrick D Hahn says
March 3, 2020 at 2:17 pm
Samizdat Health Writer’s Co-operative Inc.
After rising steadily for the past several centuries, life expectancy in the Western world has stalled, and in the United States, is actually falling. This is big news — as big as global warming.
David Healy, a Professor of Psychiatry at Bangor University, traces this decline to the transition from health care to health services, which is based on guidelines which in turn are based on data manufactured and controlled by the drugmakers, and which are centered on treating risk factors rather than actual human beings. As a result, polypharmacy has become the norm, and the potential for adverse drug reactions has risen exponentially.
As a corrective, Dr. Healy offers a modest proposal: until the drugmakers make all of their data public, we all refrain from taking any drug introduced after 1990. Since almost none of these drugs have been shown to save lives, abstaining from them isn’t much of a sacrifice – and seems like a good first step towards restoring sanity to a profession which seems to have all but forgotten the maxim
Primum Non Nocere.
Publications include :
Christopher Lane Professor Author Blogger
The Paxil Papers
In the BBC Panorama segments below, which aired in Britain on October 3, 2004, David Healy says we may come to see GSK’s masking of data about these withdrawal symptoms as “one of the biggest medical scandals ever.” Senior pharmaceutical regulators in the UK acknowledge they were “disgusted” and “horrified” by the deliberate withholding of information. The President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Dr. Mike Shooter, argues that the deception “has serious implications for the whole of psychiatry; it has serious implications for the whole of medicine.” An investigative body in Britain met to consider whether to indict the drug maker on criminal charges.
https://www.christopherlane.org/the-paxil-papers/
The FDA awarded the license in March 1999, just a few months after the fact file circulated.
Brilliant prospect of free speech at last. ‘Forbidden questions and survival stories…..’ Bring it on Samizdat.
UPDATING SAMIZDAT
Bracing and synoptic hand bill for our times.
Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2020
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
This short work is a career statement for one of our most prescient observers of the industrialization of healthcare. Healy has always been one step ahead of the conversation on how we became enmeshed in diagnoses, here he tackles the as of yet unaddressed handing over of medical practice to enslavement to evidence as determined by industry-mediated, side effect hiding RCT’s.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1777056500
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A PATIENT REVOLUTION FOR CAREFUL AND KIND CARE
VICTOR MONTORI
“THE MANIFESTO OF THE PATIENT REVOLUTION”
The Patient Revolution is, at its heart, a movement based on stories.
Available at
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Why We Revolt book cover
In a series of brief and personal essays, Why We Revolt describes what is wrong with industrial healthcare, how it has corrupted its mission, and how it has stopped caring. We propose a revolution of compassion and solidarity, of unhurried conversations, and of careful and kind care.
We ask that you take the first step in the Revolution by reading Victor’s stories and share your own.
The best part? All proceeds from Why We Revolt go directly to the Patient Revolution’s mission of empowering patients, caregivers, community advocates, clinicians, and more to rebuild our healthcare system one bit at a time.
STORE
Why We Revolt – Signed Copy
WHY WE REVOLT – SIGNED COPY
15.00
POR QUE NOS REBELAMOS (PDF)
Why We Revolt is a triumph. It speaks honestly and knowledgeably about the faults of “industrial medicine.” Montori, a doctor, citizen, and poet, has produced a wonderful and meaningful book that deserves widespread attention.
— Don Berwick, physician, former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and president emeritus of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement
Members of our community have helped translate Why We Revolt in other languages
in Spanish
in Spanish
In Italian
In Italian
ABOUT VICTOR MONTORI
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Victor Montori (Lima, 1970) is a physician and researcher. He works at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota (U.S.) participating in the care of people with diabetes. He graduated from medical school in his hometown of Lima, Perú, and completed postgraduate training at Mayo Clinic in the U.S. and at McMaster University in Canada. Considered “a patient’s doctor,” Victor received the Karis Award, a patient-nominated recognition for his compassionate care. A researcher in the science of patient-centered care, Victor and his colleagues have authored over 580 research articles. A full professor of medicine at 39, Montori is one of the most cited clinical researcher in the world. In 2016, Victor founded The Patient Revolution, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing careful and kind patient care for all.
If you’ve read the book and are interested in reading more, check out
Intended for healthcare professionals
rodrigo.oliandrade@gmail.com
In the absence of help from public authorities, the residents of one of Brazil’s largest slums are mobilising themselves to contain the spread of covid-19, writes Rodrigo de Oliveira Andrade
Like many people around the world just now, those living in the São Paulo neighbourhood of Paraisópolis are terrified of covid-19. But, with a national president in denial of the pandemic and authorities that would rather forget that the slums even exist, these residents couldn’t wait for help. So, in March 2020, together with a non-profit organisation, they decided to help themselves.
They hired a private medical service with three ambulances equipped with an intensive care unit, as well as two doctors, two nurses, drivers, and first aid workers. The medical team takes turns on 24 hour shifts to attend to people with suspected coronavirus infection, to help stop the spread.
Retraction Watch turns 10: A look back, and a look forward
On Aug. 3, 2010, we published our first post on Retraction Watch. Titled, “Why write a blog about retractions?”, the welcome letter to readers outlined our hopes for the new blog. Retractions, we felt then, offered “a window into the scientific process,” as well as a source of good stories for journalists. In both regards, we have not been disappointed.
Continue reading Retraction Watch turns 10: A look back, and a look forward
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