“One of the best books in medicine I have read. A splendid, savage story about the failings of modern device regulation that reads like a mystery, not a work of medical non-fiction: It turns out to be both.”
“Lenzer’s gripping and carefully researched book addresses why America needs a New Deal in health care. This book enlightens, enrages, and will surely help advance that cause.”
—Bernard Lown, cardiologist, Emeritus Professor, Harvard School of Public Health and Nobel Peace Prize recipient
“Jeanne Lenzer has pulled off a brilliant literary hat trick; a page-turning tale of one patient’s odyssey, combined with hard-hitting investigative reporting and a compelling call to arms to fix America’s broken health care system. Before you get anything implanted in your body, read this book.”
— Shannon Brownlee, author of Overtreated
“The indefatigable investigative reporter Jeanne Lenzer tells the story of how millions of Americans are implanted with medical devices with almost no proof that they are safe.”
— Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief, the New England Journal of Medicine, and author of The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It.
"Jeanne Lenzer's incisive investigation of one man's quest for medical justice - and the regulatory failures behind it - is a must-read for anyone wanting to understand the risks faced by all of us during routine procedures. And it should be, for all of us, a call to action."
— Deborah Blum, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of The Poisoner's Handbook
"In this biomedical-corporate-political thriller, Lenzer reveals the recipe for disaster that is the medical device industry...Read this book and learn why it's critical to distinguish what is technically possible from what actually helps patients."
— H Gilbert Welch, author of Less Medicine, More Health
“Engrossing and terrifying …Thorough research is skillfully interwoven with the story of Dennis Fegan, whose struggle to expose the dangers of an implanted device that nearly killed him is both gripping and emotionally affecting…. an eye-opening warning to the public … Highly recommended.”
— Library Journal, STARRED review
“Lenzer makes an excellent, often disturbing case for “a new national attitude toward healthcare.”
— Publishers Weekly, STARRED review
"Intensive reporting on the downsides of the high-risk medical device industry. Reading like a cross between a riveting medical thriller and "a Kafka novel," the book is a powerful cautionary tale [and]...[a]n impassioned exposé that uncovers a significant danger within the contemporary health care industry.
“Lenzer, a medical investigative journalist, powerfully details some alarming reasons hospital CEOs, insurance executives, and doctors become millionaires….Readers will be impressed with Lenzer’s profiles of doctors who decry unnecessary treatments and tests, decline to take money for drug company sponsored talks, advocate disentangling money and medicine, and promote ‘doing as little as possible to patients and as much as possible for patients.’”
— Booklist, STARRED review
Americans live shorter, sicker lives than citizens of peer nations, at far greater expense.
In The Danger within Us, award-winning journalist Jeanne Lenzer explores how we got to this point, taking as her lens the wildly profitable, powerful, and unaccountable medical device industry. Vividly illustrating the costs and consequences of this industry in the lives of ordinary Americans, Lenzer tells the story of one working class man who ends up in a David and Goliath fight for justice after a medical device in his body nearly kills him. His crusade leads to shocking revelations: Corporate greed, shameless profiteering, corrupt doctors and regulators, and a terrifying lack of oversight, all of which is leading to dangerous devices going to market and into our bodies.