The Treatment Trap, a new book by Rosemary Gibson, is about the overuse of medical care — too much medicine. In this talk, Gibson tells how a woman getting a heart check-up overheard a conversation: “We’re only doing 9 bypasses a day, we need 14 a day to keep this place running.” The result of her check-up: She needed a bypass!
My encounter with too much surgery (and here). The Safe Patient Project is gathering stories of overtreatment, although it is unclear what they will do with them.
See also this excellent editorial from the New York Times:
“Is Newer Better? Not Always” (Sept. 12, 2010).
I’m fairly sure I was forced to get a root canal while being treated at a dental school clinic in Boston. My student dentist needed to do one, so her supervisor came over and banged -hard- on my tooth until, lo and behold, I needed a root canal. Since it was for her exam, she paid for it, but still….