Healthy Scepticism w/ Caitjan Gainty

From the Black Death to modern pandemics, epidemics have shaped the course of human history as profoundly as wars or revolutions. Gareth Williams, former Dean of Medicine at Bristol University, immunologist Peter Openshaw, historian Caitjan Gainty and Professor Dorian Haskard explore how past societies made sense of epidemics and ask what their experiences can teach us today. As global travel, urbanisation and environmental change create new vulnerabilities, how can history help us navigate an uncertain future? And at a time when the gap between ‘experts’ and the public is widening, who do we trust when the next crisis comes?

About the book

In today’s medical world, scepticism is marginalised: dissenting doctors and uncertain patients are seen as hardly more rational than anti-vaxx conspiracists or questionable wellness gurus. Yet legitimate doubts have been raised throughout human history—and persist for a reason.

This sharp, compassionate book rejects unhelpful binary thinking to explore the vast middle ground where we all really live. Many of us need medicine, and trust science—but still feel wary of big pharma, unsure about new treatments, and let down by a healthcare culture that gaslights and prejudges as often as it helps or heals. From chronic sufferers to minoritised communities, Caitjan Gainty tells the stories of medicine’s critics, victims and outsiders, and unveils the illogical thinking that created both modern medicine and its many sceptics.

Entertaining, enlightening and occasionally enraging, Healthy Scepticism revisits our ancient tradition of distrusting doctors and prescribes a new course of treatment. With a well-founded dose of doubt, we can see medicine’s successes and shortcomings—and understand where our broken system went wrong.

About the author

Caitjan Gainty is an award-winning writer; a historian of medicine at King’s College London; and the author of The Product of Medicine. She runs the Healthy Scepticism project, which has received funding from the Wellcome Trust. She has been a contributor to The Times, The Guardian, theBBC, The Washington Post, The i Paper, Prospect and Slate.