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Examinations into the present crisis in health care and delivery and medical education are fairly prevalent these days. Luongo, Clinical Professor of Community Medicine and International Health at Georgetown University School of Medicine, has written a scholarly and interesting book, which adds another dimension to our understanding and evaluation of this complex problem. He looks at it mainly from a philosophical viewpoint and, yet, is able to pinpoint (in a rather accurate but rambling and disjointed fashion) many of the deficiencies which have bogged down the whole medical system in the United States.
He tackles adroitly such giants as medical academia, teaching hospitals, the influence of the drug industry on research, the inadequacies of health insurance as it now exists, the dehumanizing aspects of modern medical care, the "right" of proper treatment, the alienation of American psychiatry from the mainstream of medicine, and other sore spots which many in the