Deadly Choices: Coping with Health Risks in Everyday Life

``With each new medical `discovery,' the consuming public grows increasingly hard-nosed and wary. My own patients,'' writes physician Harris, who is also a professor of economics at M.I.T., ``have grown so skeptical that they reject the latest health pronouncements out of hand. They see the media, the scientific establishment, and the government as creating a standard of perfection that no one can adhere to.'' His suggestion? They should hone their critical skills, for the problem won't vanish anytime soon: the experts will continue handing out pronouncements, and the consumer will continue to receive and judge them. This book is meant to put some of those pronouncements in perspective, and to encourage readers to to take an active role in assessing them. Harris wisely picks and chooses his health concerns, which include AIDS, cancer, cholesterol and exercise; frames discussions as composite stories, with plot and dialogue, not just as abstract arguments; and peppers his prose with questions, paradoxes and tartly noted frustrations. In other words, he's a realist who wants to be of use but who has no intention of offering quick solutions. This itself can cause some problems, as an issue is thrashed out, sometimes, to the point of exhaustion as much as conclusion. But generally, Harris is an expert mediator, bringing us into confrontation not only with the claims of experts, but also with our own mixed feelings about health and health dogmas. (Oct.)