What doctors don't tell you

Physician David Newman has written a book well-nigh the secrets your doctor keeps from you. But he's not talking about "secret cures" that sell books on alternative medicine. Instead, his new book, Hippocrates' Shadow: Secrets From the House of Medicine (Scribner), is all about the secrets that hide in unpatterned sight in medical journals and hospital hallways:

�Doctors don't know as much as you think they do. For instance, they don't know what causes nigh cases of back pain or what makes it better.

�Doctors do know that many of the tests, drugs and procedures they order and prescribe either do non work or have not been proved to act upon. Case in point: They keep prescribing antibiotics for colds and bronchitis.

, a 2007 christian Bible by former health journalist Shannon Brownlee, just out in paper-back book. She writes that the biggest job is doctors and hospitals "get paid more for doing more."

Whatever the causes, part of the cure must be straight tattle, Newman says: "There is a lot of personal responsibility in this. It's all some patients and doctors communicating."

READERS: Do you confidence your doctor? If non, who or what do you find fault? Share your experiences below:

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