The global response to the COVID-19 pandemic is the greatest science policy failure in a generation. We knew this was coming. Warnings about the threat of a new pandemic have been made repeatedly since the 1980s and it was clear in January that a dangerous new virus was causing a devastating human tragedy in China. And yet the world ignored the warnings. Why? In this short and hard-hitting book, Richard Horton, editor of the medical journal The Lancet, scrutinizes the actions that governments around the world took – and failed to take – as the virus spread from its origins in Wuhan to the global pandemic that it is today. He shows that many Western governments and their scientific advisors made assumptions about the virus and its lethality that turned out to be mistaken. Valuable time was lost while the virus spread unchecked, leaving health systems unprepared for the avalanche of infections that followed. Drawing on his own scientific and medical expertise, Horton outlines the measures that need to be put in place, at both national and international levels, to prevent this kind of catastrophe from happening again. Were supposed to be living in an era where human beings have become the dominant influence on the environment, but COVID-19 has revealed the fragility of our societies and the speed with which our systems can come crashing down. We need to learn the lessons of this pandemic and we need to learn them fast because the next pandemic may arrive sooner than we think.

Inspired by a hugely successful series entitled Treating Individuals, originally published in The Lancet, this volume will become essential reading for any professional involved with performance and evaluation of trials and systematic reviews or clinical patient care. There are many books explaining the importance of evidence-based medicine and how randomised clinical trials (RCTs) and systematic reviews should be performed. However, this is the first book to tackle the apparent conflict between the importance of evidence-based decision making and the widely-held view that it is often very difficult to apply the overall results of RCTs and systematic reviews to decisions about individual patients in routine clinical practice. The book brings together experienced clinicians, statisticians and trialists to focus on the two key questions that are most frequently asked by clinicians. Is the evidence relevant to my clinical practice? How can I judge whether the probability of benefit from treatment in my current patient is likely to differ substantially from the average probability of benefit reported in the relevant trial or systematic review? These questions are addressed from methodological and clinical perspectives, and potential approaches to improving the targeting of treatment are considered, with detailed reviews of several areas of medicine and surgery where useful progress has been made.

Investigative reporter Brian Deer exposes a conspiracy of fraud and betrayal behind attacks on a mainstay of medicine: vaccinations. 2021 IPPY Book Award Winner (Gold) in Health/Medicine/Nutrition, Recipient of the Eric Hoffer Award for Nonfiction in the Culture Category. From San Francisco to Shanghai, from Vancouver to Venice, controversy over vaccines is erupting around the globe. Fear is spreading. Banished diseases have returned. And a militant "anti-vax" movement has surfaced to campaign against children's shots. But why? In The Doctor Who Fooled the World, award-winning investigative reporter Brian Deer exposes the truth behind the crisis. Writing with the page-turning tension of a detective story, he unmasks the players and unearths the facts. Where it began. Who was responsible. How they pulled it off. Who paid. At the heart of this dark narrative is the rise of the so-called "father of the anti-vaccine movement": a British-born doctor, Andrew Wakefield. Banned from medicine, thanks to Deer's discoveries, he fled to the United States to pursue his ambitions, and now claims to be winning a "war." In an epic investigation spread across fifteen years, Deer battles medical secrecy and insider cover-ups, smear campaigns and gagging lawsuits, to uncover rigged research and moneymaking schemes, the heartbreaking plight of families struggling with disability, and the scientific scandal of our time.