Medical discontents, and scientific wonder

In a two-part discussion Dr. Saad Ismail is joined by Dr. James Le Fanu, physician and acclaimed author of the award winning history "The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine", to discuss the state of medicine today, over-diagnosis, over-treatment, and the increasing pharmaceutical encroachment upon our lives. In the second part, the discussion focuses on how science is rediscovering the mystery of ourselves, and how the human being cannot be accounted for in the purely materialistic terms of Neo-Darwinism and Neuroscience. 

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James Le Fanu is a doctor, columnist and historian of science and medicine. He studied the humanities at Ampleforth College before switching to medicine, graduating from Cambridge University and the Royal London Hospital in 1974. He subsequently worked in the Renal Transplant Unit at the Royal Free and Cardiology Department at St Mary’s Hospital.
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For the past twenty years he has combined medical practice with writing a twice weekly column for the Sunday Telegraph and Daily Telegraph as well as contributing reviews and articles to The Times, Spectator, Prospect, The Oldie, The British Medical Journal and Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. His much acclaimed ‘The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine’ won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 2014.