Shannon Brownlee, a Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, gave two important talks at Williams College on October 10, 2007. Her visit was sponsored by the Oakley Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Brownlee's stories,
essays, and opinion pieces about medicine and health care have appeared
in such publications as The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times
Magazine, The New Republic, Slate, Time, Discover, BusinessWeek,
Washington Monthly, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and The
Wilson Quarterly.
The October 10th presentations focused on her important new book: "Overtreated: How too much medicine is making us sicker and poorer." Her talks addressed the overuse and misuse of drugs and medical technologies. It is a more rounded and factual presentation of Michael Moore's health-care shockumentary "Sicko" -- with a proposed solution!
Here is a pdf of her talk: Download brownlee_williams.edt.pdf
In "Laws," Plato discusses the difference between free and slave doctors. This is germane to Ms. Brownlee's description of an ideal physician. Download plato_physician.pdf