WRITING DOCTOR'S BLOG by NYHWRITER.COM

SUBTITLES AND TRUTHS--PUPPY CHOW IS BETTER THAN PROZAC: THE TRUE STORY OF A MAN AND THE DOG WHO SAVED HIS LIFE by Bruce Goldstein

PUPPY CHOW IS BETTER THAN PROZAC: THE TRUE STORY OF A MAN

AND THE DOG WHO SAVED HIS LIFE by Bruce Goldstein (DaCapo Press,

Perseus Books Group, March 15, 2008)

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Review by Nancy Yanes-Hoffman, THE WRITING DOCTOR, at www.writingdoctor.typepad.com, email: nywriter@rochester.rr.com, 585-385-1515 16 San Rafael Drive, Rochester NY 14618
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          Nowadays, most books have subtitles (I should talk; my books do, too). It’s as though writers are dissatisfied with the bare bones of their titles. They want to reach out from the hidden bottom shelf of a crowded bookstore and grab you by the sleeve. “Stop!” the subtitles order. “Don’t go into somebody else’s would-be masterpiece. Read me instead!”

        Bruce Goldstein’s adoring memoir, PUPPY CHOW IS BETTER THAN PROZAC: THE TRUE STORY OF A MAN AND THE DOG WHO SAVED HIS LIFE (DaCapo Press, Perseus Books Group, March 15, 2008), is a perfect example of the popular subtitling genre. If you’re a dog lover, the subtitle will convince you to grab this book. Bend down, drop your umbrella and purse on the way, and see what Goldstein has to say for himself about his love affair with a Labrador retriever puppy.

        Victimized by a virulent bipolar disorder, out of a job, dumped by his girl, and unable to respond to psychiatric therapy and a parade of such drugs as lithium, Paxil, Wellbutrin, and, of course, Prozac, Goldstein was well on his way to giving up. He calls one early chapter before he  meets his puppy, “Mom, I Don’t Want to Go to Life Today.” And he doesn’t.

       At last, heeding his psychiatrist’s desperate recommendation to get a dog, he braves a hurricane to adopt the last (and best?) of a Labrador litter. Black as the proverbial ace of spades, his dog is dubbed “Ozzy” after heavy metal’s Prince of Darkness, the Satanic figure who haunts Goldstein’s imagination. Soon, this furry bundle takes over Goldstein’s life—while calming his lonely fears.

         With Ozzy at his side, Goldstein is lonely no more. Ozzy magnetizes women on the streets of New York. His “puppy harem” oohs, aahs, and “stuck to me like the New York Knicks defense.” Walking his dog followed by a caravan of women, Goldstein realizes, “I finally had an epiphany of sociological and biological proportions. I had finally solved the puzzle man had been trying to figure out since the beginning of time: all of these years the key to meeting beautiful women was picking up a bag of fresh puppy poop.”

          Ozzy is not only “man’s best friend,” he turns out to be “Manic’s best friend,” returning the frantic, obsessed Goldstein to the world he would leave behind. Goldstein gives Ozzy, “my mood-swing messiah” all the credit for keeping him on an even keel. “Thanks to Ozzy, I was really looking forward to my future—the place I thought I’d never get to see.”

         Goldstein ends his story with a poignant prayer, “I thank God this book was written by Bruce Goldstein. Not in memory of.”

        Is PUPPY CHOW overly sentimental? Maybe. But humor saves it. Is it for dog lovers only? Maybe. And then again, maybe not. Because the subtitle is right. Ozzy does save Bruce’s life. More, it’s about what we all, sick and well, must learn to expect from ourselves, no matter what. And finally, it’s about how the magic of love, even a dog’s love, can save us when we’re lost.

WHY CAN'T A WOMAN BE MORE LIKE A MAN? SEX DIFFERENCES IN THE BRAIN: FROM GENES TO BEHAVIOR ed by Jill B. Becker, Karen J. Berkley, Nori Geary, Elizabeth Hampson, James P. Herman, Elizabeth A. Young

SEX DIFFERENCES IN THE BRAIN: FROM GENES TO BEHAVIOR ed by Jill B. Becker, Karen J. Berkley, Nori Geary, Elizabeth Hampson, James P. Herman, Elizabeth A. Young
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Review by Nancy Yanes-Hoffman, THE WRITING DOCTOR, at www.writingdoctor.typepad.com, email: nywriter@rochester.rr.com, 585-385-1515--16 San Rafael Drive, Rochester NY 14618
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       “Why can't a woman,” moans MY FAIR LADY’s Professor Henry Higgins, “be more like a man?” Proffering his accepted superiority of men, Higgins’s litany complains, “Women are irrational,  Can't a woman learn to use her head? Why do they do ev'rything their mothers do? Why don't they grow up- well, like their father instead?” Finally, Higgins throws up his hands, ““Why can't a woman take after a man? Why can't a woman be like me?”

        Higgins isn’t the only one who wonders about sex differences. From time immemorial (and even before), the differences between the brains and behavior of men and women have teased and tantalized academicians and researchers. Husbands, wives, and lovers have all protested the hollow emptiness of “Vive le difference.” 

        Despite this, the crossroads between sex, brain, and behavior have only recently become a field for serious exploration. Sherry Marts, vice president of scientific affairs for the Society for Women’s Health Research, states in her preface to the seminal new guidebook, SEX DIFFERENCES IN THE BRAIN: From Genes to Behavior, edited by Jill B. Becker, Karen L. Berkley, Nori Geary, Elizabeth Hampson, James P. Herman, Elizabeth R. Young (Oxford U Pr, Dec, 2007): “Scientific evidence of sex differences in the brain is only regularly emerging now.”

         And emerge it has. For questions continually nag: Why are men and women so different? What factors, biological and cultural, account for their divergences and disparities? How will new and better knowledge help men and women understand each other, build better relationships in the future? How will it translate into better health care for both men and women?

        Recognizing the need for bridging the chasms in our knowledge of the health discrepancies between men and women, Doctor Becker and her five colleagues have written and edited a brilliant, long-overdue guidebook leading us to better understanding, treatment, and care of men and women.

        SEX DIFFERENCES divides in three parts, what we already know, what we need to know, and how our knowledge will affect the neurobiology of disease and the treatment of neurological disorders.

        In the very first chapter, Turk Rhen and David Crews ask the crucial question: “Why Are There Two Sexes?” After that, Margaret McCarthy and Arthur Arnold sum up what we know about sex differences in “What’s old and what’s New.”

        This introductory section examines research and methodological issues, insights and challenges, as they affect both “Hormone-Behavior Relations,” in non-human animals and most specially in human animals. Understanding and monitoring the menstrual cycle is then essential information for grasping the way that  male and female brains, stress systems, and pharmacogenomics function. Jill Becker has tellingly focused her attention on these subjects for the last two decades.

        The fascinating second section zeroes in on the interaction between neurobiology and behavior. Chapters hone in on steroid receptors and their influence on sex differences in behavior, another Becker specialty. Other topics include dissimilarities in affiliative behavior and social bonding; motivation, movement; energy, obesity, and eating;  children’s play; neurocognition of language (“why don’t you ever talk to me?”); and visuospacial perception. If they do nothing else, these researches prove how different we really are. And how important it is for us to understand those differences.

         Devoted to the neurobiology of disease, the last section covers male and female responses to infectious and autoimmune disease (why is fibromyalgia visited upon more women than men?), pain (which gender is more likely to become addicted?), anxiety, mood, Parkinsonism. As Boomers and their parents join the aging multitudes in the future that awaits all of us, the penultimate chapter on aging and Alzheimer’s diseases (yes, plural) is a particularly important resource for casual readers, clinicians (neurologist and non-neurologists), patients and families.

        One caveat: We hope the Becker group will continue listening carefully to men and women and recording their findings. Certainly, we hope they are at work on a companion volume to fill the lacunae in this text.  For what about such other common autoimmune diseases as arthritis and diabetes which the book does not mention? What about a more detailed discussion—apart from steroidal and hormonal levels--of the differences between male and female sexual desire, fulfillment, satisfaction, and oncomitant tendencies to infidelity (not limited to governors of New York).

        In the meantime, the inquiring reader will find it helpful to consult the plethora of books on genes (Tower lists 28 for 2008 in its catalog!). Turning to the March 18th, 2008 issue of the JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (JAMA), which is devoted to genes, genetics, and genomics, will add a world of information to the Becker group’s excellent guidebook.

       While scientists and researchers have long needed a book like SEX DIFFERENCES, its readership should not be limited to academia. The questing student of any age will find answers to many thorny questions—as well as more challenges to his or her perspectives and relationships.

WHOSE BLOOD MATTERS MOST? WHAT DO GENES TELL US? BLOOD MATTERS by Masha Gessen

BLOOD MATTERS: From Inherited Illness to Designer Babies: How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene  by Masha Gessen
(Harcourt, April, 2008)

Review by Nancy Yanes Hoffman, THE WRITING DOCTOR, at www.writingdoctor.typepad.com, email: nywriter@rochester.rr.com,
585-385-1515, 16 San Rafael Drive, Rochester, NY 14618

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       In this “Information Age,” what do we do with our so-called “knowledge.” How can we use it to make the best decisions? Or, at the very least, better decisions? How does the bursting, ever-changing world of genetics inform us about what we should do? Or what we can do?

        Tower Books lists 28 books about genetics and genomes coming  out this year. On March 18th, 2008, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) will publish a group of theme issues in its own pages and in its Archives of Dermatology, Neurology, Ophthalmology, and Surgery on Genetics and Genomics. Gearing its focus to “Personalized Medicine in a Variety of Specialties,” it aims to examine “the challenges that medical breakthroughs engender.”

         Two years ago, a UK publishing house commissioned my book, GENETICS FOR THE NON-GENETICIST PHYSICIAN.  Although the book is already outdated, it shows how underprepared physicians feel about integrating genomics into the everyday practice of medicine.

          Where can all this research, all these publications, lead us? Can they help us decide what to do about our own thorny medical problems?

          Although one of Tower's 28 books, Masha Gessen’s BLOOD MATTERS is subtitled From Inherited Illness to Designer Babies: How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene (Harcourt, April, 2008), her text disagrees with the promise—and ostensible premise--of her subtitle. By the end of the book, the reader is left still wondering what she would do were she in Gessen’s shoes.

          In 2004, Gessen learned  she had inherited the BRCA1 gene, predisposing her to breast and ovarian cancer.  Bitterly blaming her mother and grandfather for visiting this “deleterious mutation” upon her, she set out to avert the evil decree, which is, she tells us, more common among Ashkenazi Jewish women.

          What should she do? Should every at-risk individual for hereditary disease undergo testing? If the test is “positive” for disease—meaning that the future may be negative, should she opt for major surgery? In Gessen’s case, should she undergo prophylactic removal of her breasts and ovaries? Should she wait and see?

           Is it a blessing or a curse to know about a predisposition to breast cancer? What about other diseases that Gessen discusses, such as Huntington’s disease, where nothing can be done? What about the very rare “maple syrup disease” found among Mennonites, where the future is so bleak for its victims?

           Gessen hones in on her own life and choices, which are the primary focus of her book. Yet the sections about the choices facing Huntington disease’s sufferers are the most telling. Although breast cancer is not universally fatal by a long shot, Gessen seems most able to identify with individuals who might have inherited the viciously fatal Huntington disease gene. 

           When she talks about designer genes, she seems to leave her subject behind. Gessen would have done well to concentrate on four major areas surrounding common chronic adult-onset diseases: outcomes of genomic medicine; aspects of consumers’ needs for  information; physicians’ delivery and counseling of genomic medicine; and communication barriers to integrating genomic medicine into useful preventive care and treatment.

          In her JAMA study (2008:299 [11]: 1320-1334) Maren T. Scheuner asks seminal questions that Gessen never addresses: “do patients who receive counseling and testing have better clinical outcomes in terms of mortality, decrease in incidence of disease, and better clinical responses to pharmaceuticals? And at what cost?"

BLOOD MATTERS is regrettably too self-involved to take the reader along with Gessen on her journey. The interested reader would learn more about what genes mean to our own medical care--our own futures-- by examining the provocative set of articles in the Genetics/Genomics Theme Issue of the JAMA.

650

NEW PARTS FOR OLD--CHARLATAN: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam by Pope Brock (Crown, Feb,

CHARLATAN: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam by Pope Brock (Crown, Feb, 2008)

Review by Nancy Yanes Hoffman, THE WRITING DOCTOR, WWW.WRITINGDOCTOR.TYPEPAD.COM, email: nywriter@rochester.rr.com, 16 San Rafael Drive, Rochester, NY 14618. 585-385-1515

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        What makes a quack run? What drives a pseudo-doctor, “Dr” John R Brinkley, to practice  quack medicine rather than trying to heal the sick? What makes his nemesis, a power-hungry, AMA quack-buster, Dr Morris Fishbein,  pursue this charlatan for more than 25 years? And what drives countless patients, men and women, “as guileless as the wide-mouthed shad.” to the charlatan’s door for help from whatever ails them?  What turned an era, into “the golden age of quacks”  And finally, is that era it over yet?

          Ostensibly the story of one of America’s greatest quacks, “Dr.” John R Brinkley, Pope Brock’s ironic, witty chronicle of CHARLATAN (Crown, Feb, 2008) is about all the forces, individual and cultural,that contributed to Brinkley’s medical “successes” and finally, his downfall.

         Playing upon the American dream of endless youth, of  “rejuvenation,” (still alive-and-well as America’s favorite pipe dream) Brinkley’s greatest triumphs initially sprung from embedding billy goat testicles into the human scrotum and later even into women’s ovaries.

        But in 1931, medicine caught up with him.  After the Kansas State Medical Board tallied 42 countable deaths at Brinkley’s hands, with untold numbers of deaths after patients left Brinkley’s “hospitals,” it revoked his medical license. At the same time, the Federal Radio Commission, revoked his radio license. Undaunted, Brinkley ran for governor of Kansas—and almost won. His campaign pioneered airplane whistle-stops all over Kansas aided and abetted by radio promotion. In case you hadn't noticed, these innovations are still alive and kicking today.

         After the licenses' revocations and the loss of the governorship,Brinkley got the Kansas message. He moved to Texas. In Del Rio, Texas on the Mexican border, he built a mansion fit for a charlatan and a hotel-like “hospital” for prostate surgery patients. Ever the innovator, he used Mexican-based radio to promote himself and his medicine.

         And he made money. Lots of money.  He charged $750 for “gonad surgery,” but his fee for prostate surgery was only $250 a pop. Always, it was cash on the barrelhead—before the operation—just as present-day surgical offices insist on insurance cards and co-pay before the visit.

          Money made money. He bankrolled “Border Blasters,” his high-potency radio shows emanating from his million-watt station, XERA, in Villa Acuna, Mexico into the most powerful station broadcasting on American air waves. Patients heard and flocked to Del Rio for glandular injections—and later, bargain-basement prostate surgery.

         One of XERA’s claims to fame was Brinkley’s Medical Question Box. Listeners sent in letters detailing their health problems. Brinkley prescribed treatment bought from pharmacists hired to kickback percentages of sales. Something like Senator Bill Frist’s long-distance diagnosis of  Terry Schiavo’s problems. As the song goes, “ainsi c’est toujours le meme chose.”

         Del Rio was good to Brinkley. During his five years of broadcasting and prescribing, he pocketed about $12 million. But in 1938, another Del Rio doctor began stealing Brinkley’s thunder by selling the same operations for a lower fee.

          So Brinkley moved to Little Rock, Arkansas in 1938. But Brinkley's Midas touch had become tin. Things were going wrong. In 1939, he lost a libel suit against his obsessed Ahab, Dr. Morris Fishbein. Not only was Fishbein the longtime editor of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and AMA president, but he was an equally egotistical firebrand, who had spent much of his professional life committed to bringing Brinkley down.

          Brinkley’s testimony inadvertently helped Fishbein’s case. On the stand, Brinkley admitted that his surgery was something like a vasectomy. Further, his celebrated Formula 1020 for rejuvenating male desire and performance was only dressed-up colored water.

          After Brinkley lost his appeal, the judge  accused him of being “a charlatan and a quack in the ordinary,well-understood meaning of the words.” Hearing this, disgruntled patients filed civil suit after civil suit. Down on his luck, declaring bankruptcy in 1941, Brinkley was indicted for mail fraud. With the suits pending and dogged by ill health, Brinkley died alone of a blood clot in 1942.

          What made Brinkley run? CHARLATAN, despite its wondrously deft insights isn’t sure. Whether greed alone powered his engine or a healthy (word used inadvisedly) dose of egotistical narcissism fueled his exploits remains unknown. In fact, what made Fishbein run? Fishbein was so much a mirror image of Brinkley—albeit law-abiding and medicine-upholding—that the two were American medical twins.

        If Brinkley himself was dross, CHARLATAN is gold. Brock’s history of American medicine’s feats and flaws, achievements, anecdotes, and trickery invites the reader to compare medicine then with medicine now. In one of the many nuggets of little-known Americana sparking his tale, Brock reports that more than 400 of the 526 radio stations accepted no advertising because “Radio Czar Herbert Hoover, the secretary of commerce, declared it ‘inconceivable that we should allow so great a possibility for service to be drowned in advertiser chatter.’”

         Hoover was, of course, right. Radio, television, email, the internet are awash in "advertiser chatter," offering an open-sesame to the "flim-flam" of 2008. Reading Brock's tales of these medical machiavellis is not only fun, but it  should sound a much-needed alarm about medicine's present-day gimmick-providers.

NEW PARTS FOR OLD--CHARLATAN: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam by Pope Brock (Crown, Feb,

CHARLATAN: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam by Pope Brock (Crown, Feb, 2008)
Review by Nancy Yanes-Hoffman, THE WRITING DOCTOR, .writingdoctor.typepad.com, email: nywriter@rochester.rr.com, 585-385-1515,

16 San Rafael Drive

,

Rochester

 

NY

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

        What makes a quack run? What drives a pseudo-doctor, “Dr” John R Brinkley, to practice  quack medicine rather than trying to heal the sick? What makes his nemesis, a power-hungry, AMA quack-buster, Dr Morris Fishbein,  pursue this charlatan for more than 25 years? And what drives countless patients, men and women, “as guileless as the wide-mouthed shad.” to the charlatan’s door for help from whatever ails them?  What turned an era, into “the golden age of quacks”  And finally, is that era it over yet?

          Ostensibly the story of one of America’s greatest quacks, “Dr.” John R Brinkley, Pope Brock’s ironic, witty chronicle of CHARLATAN (Crown, Feb, 2008) is about all the forces, individual and cultural,that contributed to Brinkley’s medical “successes” and finally, his downfall.

         Playing upon the American dream of endless youth, of  “rejuvenation,” (still alive-and-well as America’s favorite pipe dream) Brinkley’s greatest triumphs initially sprung from embedding billy goat testicles into the human scrotum and later even into women’s ovaries.

        But in 1931, medicine caught up with him.  After the Kansas State Medical Board tallied 42 countable deaths at Brinkley’s hands, with untold numbers of deaths after patients left Brinkley’s “hospitals,” it revoked his medical license. At the same time, the Federal Radio Commission, revoked his radio license. Undaunted, Brinkley ran for governor of Kansas—and almost won. His campaign pioneered airplane whistle-stops all over Kansas aided and abetted by radio promotion. In case you hadn't noticed, these innovations are still alive and kicking today.

         After the licenses' revocations and the loss of the governorship,Brinkley got the Kansas message. He moved to Texas. In Del Rio, Texas on the Mexican border, he built a mansion fit for a charlatan and a hotel-like “hospital” for prostate surgery patients. Ever the innovator, he used Mexican-based radio to promote himself and his medicine.

         And he made money. Lots of money.  He charged $750 for “gonad surgery,” but his fee for prostate surgery was only $250 a pop. Always, it was cash on the barrelhead—before the operation—just as present-day surgical offices insist on insurance cards and co-pay before the visit.

          Money made money. He bankrolled “Border Blasters,” his high-potency radio shows emanating from his million-watt station, XERA, in Villa Acuna, Mexico into the most powerful station broadcasting on American air waves. Patients heard and flocked to Del Rio for glandular injections—and later, bargain-basement prostate surgery.

         One of XERA’s claims to fame was Brinkley’s Medical Question Box. Listeners sent in letters detailing their health problems. Brinkley prescribed treatment bought from pharmacists hired to kickback percentages of sales. Something like Senator Bill Frist’s long-distance diagnosis of  Terry Schiavo’s problems. As the song goes, “ainsi c’est toujours le meme chose.”

         Del Rio was good to Brinkley. During his five years of broadcasting and prescribing, he pocketed about $12 million. But in 1938, another Del Rio doctor began stealing Brinkley’s thunder by selling the same operations for a lower fee.

          So Brinkley moved to Little Rock, Arkansas in 1938. But Brinkley's Midas touch had become tin. Things were going wrong. In 1939, he lost a libel suit against his obsessed Ahab, Dr. Morris Fishbein. Not only was Fishbein the longtime editor of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and AMA president, but he was an equally egotistical firebrand, who had spent much of his professional life committed to bringing Brinkley down.

          Brinkley’s testimony inadvertently helped Fishbein’s case. On the stand, Brinkley admitted that his surgery was something like a vasectomy. Further, his celebrated Formula 1020 for rejuvenating male desire and performance was only dressed-up colored water.

          After Brinkley lost his appeal, the judge  accused him of being “a charlatan and a quack in the ordinary,well-understood meaning of the words.” Hearing this, disgruntled patients filed civil suit after civil suit. Down on his luck, declaring bankruptcy in 1941, Brinkley was indicted for mail fraud. With the suits pending and dogged by ill health, Brinkley died alone of a blood clot in 1942.

          What made Brinkley run? CHARLATAN, despite its wondrously deft insights isn’t sure. Whether greed alone powered his engine or a healthy (word used inadvisedly) dose of egotistical narcissism fueled his exploits remains unknown. In fact, what made Fishbein run? Fishbein was so much a mirror image of Brinkley—albeit law-abiding and medicine-upholding—that the two were American medical twins.

        If Brinkley himself was dross, CHARLATAN is gold. Brock’s history of American medicine’s feats and flaws, achievements, anecdotes, and trickery invites the reader to compare medicine then with medicine now. In one of the many nuggets of little-known Americana sparking his tale, Brock reports that more than 400 of the 526 radio stations accepted no advertising because “Radio Czar Herbert Hoover, the secretary of commerce, declared it ‘inconceivable that we should allow so great a possibility for service to be drowned in advertiser chatter.’”