The Noble Lie

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: Addiction

Chapter 2: Depression: In the magic Factory

Chapter 3: Sexual Orientation: gay Science

Chapter 4: Schizophrenia: In the Kingdom of the Unabomber

Chapter 5: Brain Death: As Good as dead

Chapter 6: Persistent Vegetative State: Back From the Dead

Chapter 7: Mortality: We'll All Wake Up Together

Afterword

Index

GARY GREENBERG has written about the intersection of science, politics, and ethics for many magazines, include Harper's, the New Yorker, Wired, Discover, Rolling Stone, and Mother Jones, where he's a contributing writer. His reporting has been widely reprinted and anthologized, including in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2002. He is also a practicing psychotherapist in Connecticut.

Has science replaced religion for a modern society unwilling to bear moral responsibility? Questions of life and death lie in doctors' hands. Even a diagnosis, says science writer and psychologist Greenberg, is a moral statement: the doctor is "telling you what's wrong with your life and how to fix it." This unconvincing statement exemplifies Greenberg's difficulties in his muddled attempt to grapple with our faith in scientific truth. Diseases are invented, not discovered, he claims. By exploring various medical issues--such as addiction, depression, brain death--he tries to demonstrate that "deciding which suffering should be relieved and how is not as simple as applying a stethoscope to a chest"--hardly an original idea. The truth becomes a casualty of organized medicine's need to provide relief to all who say they are suffering, and that need is institutionalized and commercialized by structures like the FDA and the drug industry. The "noble lie" inherent in the treatments offered for common diagnoses can't last, says the author. But while Greenberg's questions about the scientific validity of medical research and treatments are urgent, they have been explored more capably and cogently elsewhere. (Sept.) (Publishers Weekly, July 28, 2007)