Ending Medical Reversal: Improving Outcomes, Saving Lives is a nonfiction book written by Vinay Prasad and Adam Cifu, published in 2015 by Johns Hopkins University Press.
Medical reversal occurs when "a current clinical practice is found to be ineffective or inferior to a previous standard of care." [1]
According to reviews in The New York Times, the book is "subtly subversive." [2] Writing for The NY Times, Abigail Zuger writes, "More surprising, though, is an odd paradox: Often it is the treatments that make the most theoretical sense that fail." [2] Sarah Wallan, a writer for MedPage Today, interviewed the co-authors about the book's origins as well as the potential improvements and comprehensive solutions they would like to see implemented in the landscape of healthcare and regulatory policy. [3] In Wallan's review of the book, she addresses that Prasad and Cifu "carefully note that their intent in compiling this evidence was not to scold or criticize the members of their profession, but to remind clinicians to be humble in their approach to medicine, and to insist on proof before practice." [3]
Keith L. Black is an American neurosurgeon specializing in the treatment of brain tumors and a prolific campaigner for funding of cancer treatment. He is chairman of the neurosurgery department and director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California.
Arnold Seymour Relman — known as Bud Relman to intimates — was an American internist and professor of medicine and social medicine. He was editor of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) from 1977 to 1991, where he instituted two important policies: one asking the popular press not to report on articles before publication and another requiring authors to disclose conflicts of interest. He wrote extensively on medical publishing and reform of the U.S. health care system, advocating non-profit delivery of single-payer health care. Relman ended his career as professor emeritus at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.
Norman Gevitz is a medical sociologist and historian and academic administrator. He has written numerous books and papers on the history of medicine in the United States and England. He is perhaps best known for his book, The D.O.s: Osteopathic Medicine in America, where he discusses the history of the profession osteopathic medicine in the United States.
The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science is a book on neuroplasticity by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge.
Dan Fagin is an American journalist who specializes in environmental science. He won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for his best-selling book Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation. Toms River also won the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, the National Academies Communication Award, and the Rachel Carson Environment Book Award of the Society of Environmental Journalists, among other literary prizes.
David Xavier Cifu is an American physiatrist, researcher, and medical educator. He is the Associate Dean for Innovation and System Integration in the School of Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, the chairman and Herman J. Flax M.D. Professor of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R) at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond, Virginia, staff physiatrist at the Hunter Holmes McGuire Veterans Administration Medical Center (HHM-VAMC), founding director of the VCU-Center for Rehabilitation Science and Engineering and senior TBI specialist in the Department of Veterans Affairs' Veterans Health Administration.
Robert M. "Bob" Wachter is an academic physician and author. He is on the faculty of University of California, San Francisco, where he is chairman of the Department of Medicine, the Lynne and Marc Benioff Endowed Chair in Hospital Medicine, and the Holly Smith Distinguished Professor in Science and Medicine. He is generally regarded as the academic leader of the hospitalist movement, the fastest growing specialty in the history of modern medicine. He and a colleague, Lee Goldman, are known for coining the term "hospitalist" in a 1996 New England Journal of Medicine article.
Strange Son: Two Mothers, Two Sons, and the Quest to Unlock the Hidden World of Autism is a non-fiction book that follows the story of Portia Iversen's second son who initially appeared to be developing normally, but started to have autistic characteristics by the age of two. His mother heard about an autistic 14-year-old boy in India who had been taught to communicate so well that he could write poetry. She decided to bring the boy and his mother to California to see if their success could be replicated with her own son.
Gerald Imber is an American plastic surgeon, specializing in minimally invasive cosmetic surgery techniques to combat aging. He runs a private surgery practice in New York City and is an assistant clinical professor of surgery at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center.
Science-Based Medicine is a website and blog with articles covering issues in science and medicine, especially medical scams and practices. Founded in 2008, it is owned and operated by the New England Skeptical Society and run by Steven Novella, David Gorski, and Harriet Hall.
The tomato effect occurs when effective therapies for a condition are rejected, usually because they do not make sense in the context of the current understanding or theory of the disease in question. The name refers to the fact that tomatoes were rejected as a food source by most North Americans until the end of the 19th century, because the prevailing belief at the time was that they were poisonous.
Blast Books is a New York-based book publisher whose catalog consists of non-fiction books which focus on cultural and historical subjects, often of an obscure or unusual nature. Many of their publications include archival illustrations and photography.
MedPage Today is a medical news-focused site owned by Ziff-Davis, LLC. It is based in New York City, and is geared primarily toward medical and health professionals.
The Theatre of War Project is an offering of social impact theater company Theater of War Productions that presents readings of Sophocles' Ajax and Philoctetes for military and civilian communities.
Vinayak K. Prasad is an American hematologist-oncologist and health researcher. He is an associate professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco who, together with Adam Cifu, coined the term medical reversal. He is the author of the books Ending Medical Reversal (2015) and Malignant (2020).
Lee Goldman is an American cardiologist and educator at Columbia University, where he is professor of medicine at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health, and Dean Emeritus of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine. From 2006 to 2020 he served as Executive Vice President and Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine, Chief Executive Officer of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, and Harold and Margaret Hatch Professor of the university. Before moving to Columbia, he was chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He received his B.A., M.D., and M.P.H. degrees from Yale University.
Medical reversal refers to when a newer and methodologically superior clinical trial produces results that contradict existing clinical practice and the older trials on which it is based. This leads to an intervention that was widely used falling out of favor, because new evidence either demonstrates that it is ineffective or that its harms exceed its benefits. It is distinct from replacement, which occurs when a newly developed medical treatment supersedes an older, less effective one as the standard of care. Medical reversals are caused when a treatment is widely adopted even when there is not compelling evidence for its safety and effectiveness. For example, an intervention may be adopted because it "makes sense", or because there are observational studies supporting its putative benefits. The negative effects of such reversals include harm to patients who received the intervention when it was considered relatively safe and effective, as well as reducing public trust in medicine.
Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters is a 2020 book by Abigail Shrier, published by Regnery Publishing, which endorses the contentious concept of rapid-onset gender dysphoria. ROGD is not recognized as a medical diagnosis by any major professional institution and is not backed by credible scientific evidence.
Adam Seth Cifu is an American physician, academic, author and researcher. He is a Professor of Medicine and Associate Dean for Medical School Academics at the University of Chicago.