The Sick Machine
Chronic disease is at record levels. So is pharmaceutical spending. So is the number of people on multiple medications. In The Sick Machine, chiropractor Dan Shakespeare argues this is not a coincidence - it is the predictable output of a healthcare system structurally incentivised to manage illness rather than resolve it. Drawing on peer-reviewed research, regulatory records, and over a decade of clinical practice, Shakespeare traces the mechanisms that keep patients dependent: the research funding models that bury inconvenient findings, the adjuvants in vaccines, the drug cascades that turn one diagnosis into three, and the revolving door between regulators and the industries they are supposed to oversee. Chapter by chapter, The Sick Machine examines the conditions driving the global chronic disease epidemic - from childhood illness and psychiatric medication to cancer treatment and the suppression of dissenting science - and asks why, despite record levels of pharmaceutical intervention, population health continues to decline. This is not an anti-medicine book. Emergency care, trauma medicine, and acute intervention save lives daily, and Shakespeare is clear on that distinction. What this book interrogates is the chronic disease management model: the part of healthcare that was supposed to get people well and keep them that way, but instead created the most medicated, chronically ill generation in history. The Sick Machine is a book for patients who have sensed something is wrong but couldn't name it.
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