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Learning Who to Trust to Get and Stay Healthy
by F. Perry Wilson MD
Blending personal anecdotes with hard science, an accomplished physician, researcher, and science communicator pulls back the curtain on medicine and medical research, revealing how progress is made—and how to rebuild trust between doctors and patients.
We live in an age of medical miracles. Never in the history of humankind has so much talent and energy been harnessed to cure disease. So why does it feel like it's getting harder to live our healthiest lives? Why does it seem like "experts" can't agree on anything, and why do our interactions with medical professionals feel less personal, less honest, and less impactful than ever?
Through stories from his own practice and historical case studies, Dr. F. Perry Wilson, a physician and researcher from the Yale School of Medicine, explains how and why the doctor-patient relationship has eroded in recent years and illuminates how profit-driven companies—from big Pharma to healthcare corporations—have corrupted what should have been medicine's golden age. By clarifying the realities of the medical field today, Dr. Wilson gives readers the tools they need to make informed decisions, from evaluating the validity of medical information online to helping caregivers advocate for their loved ones, in the doctor's office and with the insurance company.
Dr. Wilson wants readers to understand medicine and medical science the way he does: as an imperfect and often frustrating field, but still the best option for getting well. To restore trust between patients, doctors, medicine, and science, we need to be honest, we need to know how to spot misinformation, and we need to avoid letting skepticism ferment into cynicism. For it is only by redefining what "good medicine" is—science that is well-researched, rational, safe, effective, and delivered with compassion, empathy, and trust—that the doctor-patient relationship can be truly healed.
What are you reading this week? (04/10/2025)
Ok bear with me: Story of my life by Lucy Score The story she left behind by Patti Callahan Henry Lessons in chemistry by Bonnie Garmus Anything you do say by Gillian McAllister The assistant by Winter K. Willis The firm by John Grisham The Griffin sisters' greatest hits by Jennifer Weiner How me...
-Marijana_Bankovic
"A trenchant, empowering look at how to fix doctor-patient relationships." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Mixing hard data with personal anecdotes, Wilson sets out a convincing case, and he does not ignore the difficulties of making these changes ... In an unstinting appraisal of the profession, Wilson effectively diagnoses the issues and looks for new paths forward." - Kirkus Reviews
"With the premise that trust is the key ingredient that's missing in modern medicine, Dr. Perry Wilson lays the groundwork for a paradigm-shifting view of the physician-patient relationship. He also offers a transformative take on how to process the endless wealth of health information (and disinformation) that's available to us." - Gabby Bernstein, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Universe Has Your Back
"Perhaps the most honest and brave book about healthcare you'll ever read. Certainly the most useful!" - Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD, author of When We Do Harm and What Doctors Feel
This information about How Medicine Works and When it Doesn't was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
F. Perry Wilson, MD grew up in Connecticut before attending Harvard College, where he graduated with Honors in Biochemistry. He then attended medical school at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, before completing his internship, residency, and fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2012, he received a master's degree in Clinical Epidemiology, which has informed his research ever since. At Yale, since 2014, his goal has been to use patient-level data and advanced analytics to personalize medicine to each individual patient. To that end, he holds multiple NIH grants and is the Director of Yale's Clinical and Translational Research Accelerator. Dr. Wilson is internationally recognized for his expertise in the design and interpretation of medical studies, and has appeared on CNN, HLN, NPR, MedPageToday.com, Medscape.com, Vox.com, the Huffington Post and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, among others. His free online course, entitled "Understanding Medical Research: Your Facebook Friend Is Wrong" is one of the most popular courses on Coursera.org.
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