Thanks to advances in modern medicine people are living longer, healthier lives, and we’re constantly discovering new ways to treat illness and disease. Yet the medical community has made mistakes, not just on individual cases, but in making erroneous recommendations that have impacted the lives of millions. For example, The American Academy of Pediatrics telling American parents to avoid giving children peanuts until age 3 has resulted in a spike in peanut allergies in our country. Medical experts also told us there were no downsides to antibiotics, prescribed them widely and now we have a drug resistant bacteria crisis. Today we talk about some of these mistakes in more detail- not just how they happened and what it means for the public, but what we can do to prevent it from happening in the future.
Joining us is Dr. Marty Makary professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and member of the National Academy of Medicine. His latest book is Blind Spots, When Medicine Gets it Wrong, and What it means for our Health.
Mindy Todd hosts.
Blind spots: what it means for our health when Medicine gets it wrong
