Appalling Medical Practices Upstage Mystery

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	• Natural Causes Michael Palmer Bantam, 1994 - 496 pages average customer review:based on 15 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Good reading

A medical thriller, different from what I have been reading but interesting all the same. Well written.

Nothing to write home about

This book was Ok. I've read a few of Palmer's books and this was not my favorite. It wasn't terrible, just nothing too exciting.

It's about a hospital that is mixed with traditional type doctors vs. new-age doctors. And when pregnant women start dying from some unknown cause, the two clash on what is the cause.

The characters were interesting, as the scenario. The ending was pretty easy to guess. Overall it was a decent read, just nothing to write home about.

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Pretty Interesting

I came across this book at a used library book sale and purchased it for trading but ended up reading it because of the reviews here. The book held my interest all the way through. I found myself wanting to get back to it in between reading sessions. I found the ending to be a bit anti-climactic and was a bit disappointed with it. I thought because the rest of the book was quite good that the ending would be better.

Excellent medical thriller

I just discovered Michael Palmer's work, and I'm hurrying to remedy that deficiency. Dr. Palmer writes tightly plotted medical fiction that holds the reader in suspense and keeps them off-balance with new twists and turns. This book kept me reading, because there were few, if any, spots where I could say, "I'll put the book down and read some more later." It's a true page-turner, in every sense of the word.
The emphasis on alternative medicine was something of an initial turn-off for me, since I'm a physician grounded in conventional medicine. However, Dr. Palmer has definitely done his homework, and eventually I found myself quite interested by some of the material he brings out. All that aside, from the standpoint of well-done medical suspense, this book is excellent.

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Appalling Medical Practices Upstage Mystery

I realized as I read NATURAL CAUSES by Michael Palmer that I had actually read it when it first came out, and I very nearly never read another Michael Palmer book afterwards. I felt the same way while reading the book the second time-- I was unable to get past the Woo-Woo- practices of acupuncture and untested herbalistic medicines administered by the heroine of the book, Dr. Sarah Baldwin.

Yes, Dr. Baldwin saves patients lives using acupuncture and the book makes some outrageous claims regarding the efficacy of acupuncture that are not borne out by the scientific literature. In addition, instead of the standard pre-natal vitamins, Dr. Baldwin gives her patients the option of drinking a special concoction of herbal tea that she used in Thailand. When three cases of a horrible medical condition called DIC (disseminated intravascular coagulapathy) occur during the labor stage of three different women, resulting in the deaths of all of the babies and two of the women, it seems the only thing they have in common is the fact that they have taken the special pre-natal tea prescribed by Dr. Baldwin.

The father of the surviving woman is very wealthy and he files suit against Dr. Baldwin. The CDC gets involved and the CDC rep, Rosa Suarez, says repeatedly that all they need to do is find a case of DIC in a patient that has not taken the herbal tea to get Dr. Baldwin off the hook. That is a bunch of scientific hokum as finding a separate case not related to the tea does not keep the tea from being implicated. It's entirely possible that DIC could have multiple causes.

I also have a huge problem with the fact that even though Dr. Baldwin and her lawyer, Matt Daniels, know it is a conflict of interest for them to get romantically involved, they do so anyway-- Sarah deliberately, using the rationale that she's tired of putting off what she really wants in life- that's an example of the stupidity she continually exhibits in this book. For instance, even though she knows she is being framed and that someone is trying to kill her, she stupidly follows mysterious instructions to run to an isolated room and answer a ringing phone, resulting in her getting clonkled on the head and nearly killed. I have a hard time feeling any sympathy for her at all!

There are a couple of things that kept me from giving the book less than 3 stars-- 1. I actually did like the character of Rosa Suarez and her dogged pursuit of the truth. 2. If I take out the Woo-Woo factors and rate the book solely on its merits as a FICTIONAL thriller, it is a good mystery, even if the ending was rather predictable (although I nearly gave it 2 stars just because Dr. Baldwin was just so stupid as a character.)

However (and here I climb back on my soapbox again,) with the wide audience that Michael Palmer has, I hate to see him doing anything that gives credence in any way to medical practices that have not had their effectiveness proven by scientific studies involving double blind studies and scientific review. Fact: the few scientific studies that have been conducted involving acupuncture have shown no difference in the outcome for subjects receiving acupuncture and those who have not. And Fact: women, especially those who are pregnant, should not be ingesting medicines and vitamins that have not been subjected to scientific studies to ensure their efficacy and to make sure they do not harm the mother or baby. It matters not that in this book, Dr. Baldwin's tea is eventually proven to not be a factor in the cases of DIC. Dr. Baldwin's medical practices are examples of unproven alternative medical techniques and poor scientific methodology and Dr. Michael Palmer should not be advocating them.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

Dr. Sarah Baldwin races to a Boston hospital with a young woman whose normal labor has suddenly become a matter of life and death. As she struggles to save both mother and baby, she doesn't know that two other women have already died under horrifying identical circumstances. And so begins Sarah's own nightmare, as she learns that the prenatal herbal vitamins she prescribed are the only thing these women have in common. Soon Sarah is fighting to save her career, her reputation--her life. For she's certain there must be some unknown factor linking these women, and as she gets closer to the truth, it becomes clear that someone will do anything--even murder--to keep a devastating secret.

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