In this book, the physician and philosopher Raymond Tallis yokes together his diverse intellectual interests to address important questions about our well-being. In a series of stimulating and impassioned arguments, he establishes the truth about, among many other things, recent health scares, explains why patients compete for our doctors' and nurses' time; why the exploding popularity of alternative therapies is actually bad for our health; and how one man's view of the MMR vaccine influenced a nation. This is the summation of a lifetime's thought and medical practice, by one of Britain's most original thinkers. It will, quite simply, change for ever the way we think about ourselves and our health.