Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Paul A. Offit, "You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccination, the Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation" (Basic Book, 2021)
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Paul A. Offit, "You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccination, the Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation" (Basic Book, 2021)
Every medical decision—whether to have chemotherapy, an X-ray, or surgery—is a risk, no matter which way you choose. In You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccination, the Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation (Basic Book, 2021), physician Paul A. Offit argues that, from the first blood transfusions four hundred years ago to the hunt for a COVID-19 vaccine, risk has been essential to the discovery of new treatments. More importantly, understanding the risks is crucial to whether, as a society or as individuals, we accept them.
Told in Offit’s vigorous and rigorous style, You Bet Your Life is an entertaining history of medicine. But it also lays bare the tortured relationships between intellectual breakthroughs, political realities, and human foibles. Our pandemic year has shown us, with its debates over lockdowns, masks, and vaccines, how easy it is to get everything wrong. You Bet Your Life is an essential read for getting the future a bit more right.
Sine Yaganoglu trained as a neuroscientist and bioengineer (PhD, ETH Zurich). She currently works in innovation management and diagnostics.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
View all episodes
By New Books Network
5
55 ratings
Every medical decision—whether to have chemotherapy, an X-ray, or surgery—is a risk, no matter which way you choose. In You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccination, the Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation (Basic Book, 2021), physician Paul A. Offit argues that, from the first blood transfusions four hundred years ago to the hunt for a COVID-19 vaccine, risk has been essential to the discovery of new treatments. More importantly, understanding the risks is crucial to whether, as a society or as individuals, we accept them.
Told in Offit’s vigorous and rigorous style, You Bet Your Life is an entertaining history of medicine. But it also lays bare the tortured relationships between intellectual breakthroughs, political realities, and human foibles. Our pandemic year has shown us, with its debates over lockdowns, masks, and vaccines, how easy it is to get everything wrong. You Bet Your Life is an essential read for getting the future a bit more right.
Sine Yaganoglu trained as a neuroscientist and bioengineer (PhD, ETH Zurich). She currently works in innovation management and diagnostics.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More shows like New Books in the History of Science
View all
In Our Time
5,401 Listeners
Radiolab
43,901 Listeners
Freakonomics Radio
31,966 Listeners
99% Invisible
26,146 Listeners
New Books in Critical Theory
145 Listeners
Conversations with Tyler
2,404 Listeners
Why Theory
553 Listeners
If You're Listening
306 Listeners
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
4,116 Listeners
The Morning Edition
84 Listeners
Post Reports
5,394 Listeners
Throughline
15,947 Listeners
7am
160 Listeners
Acid Horizon
175 Listeners
The Ezra Klein Show
15,285 Listeners