James Le Fanu (born 1950) is a British retired General Practitioner,

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

and

author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...

, best known for his weekly columns in the ''

Daily Daily or The Daily may refer to: Journalism * Daily newspaper, newspaper issued on five to seven day of most weeks * ''The Daily'' (podcast), a podcast by ''The New York Times'' * ''The Daily'' (News Corporation), a defunct US-based iPad new ...

'' and ''

Sunday Telegraph ''The Sunday Telegraph'' is a British broadsheet newspaper, founded in February 1961 and published by the Telegraph Media Group, a division of Press Holdings. It is the sister paper of ''The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', kn ...

''. He is married to publisher Juliet Annan.

Life

He was educated at

Ampleforth College Ampleforth College is a co-educational independent day and boarding school in the English public school tradition located in the village of Ampleforth, North Yorkshire, England. It opened in 1802 as a boys' school, it is situated in the groun ...

and graduated from

Clare College Clare College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. The college was founded in 1326 as University Hall, making it the second-oldest surviving college of the University after Peterhouse. It was refounded ...

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

and the

Royal London Hospital The Royal London Hospital is a large teaching hospital in Whitechapel in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is part of Barts Health NHS Trust. It provides district general hospital services for the City of London and Tower Hamlets and spe ...

in 1974, and worked as a junior doctor at the Renal Transplant Unit and Cardiology Department of the

Royal Free Hospital The Royal Free Hospital (also known simply as the Royal Free) is a major teaching hospital in the Hampstead area of the London Borough of Camden. The hospital is part of the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, which also runs services at Barn ...

and St Mary’s Hospital in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

. For 20 years he combined working as a general practitioner with writing medical columns for the ''Sunday Telegraph'' and ''Daily Telegraph'' as well as contributing reviews and articles to ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'', ''

The Spectator ''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world. It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''The ...

'', ''

The British Medical Journal ''The BMJ'' is a weekly peer-reviewed medical trade journal, published by the trade union the British Medical Association (BMA). ''The BMJ'' has editorial freedom from the BMA. It is one of the world's oldest general medical journals. Origina ...

'' and ''

Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine The ''Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine'' is a peer-reviewed medical journal. It is the flagship journal of the Royal Society of Medicine with full editorial independence. Its continuous publication history dates back to 1809. Since July ...

''.Biography of James Le Fanu
jameslefanu.com, retrieved September 17, 2011. His books include ''The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine'' (1999) which won the ''

Los Angeles Times Book Prize Since 1980, the ''Los Angeles Times'' has awarded a set of annual book prizes. The Prizes currently have nine categories: biography, current interest, fiction, first fiction (the Art Seidenbaum Award added in 1991), history, mystery/thriller ( ...

'' in 2000, ''Why Us?: How science rediscovered the mystery of ourselves'' (2009) and ''Too Many Pills: How too much medicine is endangering our health and what we can do about it'' (2018). In an interview in the ''British Medical Journal'' in 2015, he was described as having "spent the past 30 years shedding light in places that others believed to be already illuminated. Prescient and provocative, Le Fanu is the goad to keep doctors humble and scientists on the right track." He admitted the worst mistake in his career was to mistake

potassium Potassium is the chemical element with the symbol K (from Neo-Latin ''kalium'') and atomic number19. Potassium is a silvery-white metal that is soft enough to be cut with a knife with little force. Potassium metal reacts rapidly with atmosphe ...

for

aminophylline Aminophylline is a compound of the bronchodilator theophylline with ethylenediamine in 2:1 ratio. The ethylenediamine improves solubility, and the aminophylline is usually found as a dihydrate. Aminophylline is less potent and shorter-acting tha ...

causing his patient to have a

cardiac arrest Cardiac arrest is when the heart suddenly and unexpectedly stops beating. It is a medical emergency that, without immediate medical intervention, will result in sudden cardiac death within minutes. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and possib ...

, "though luckily the crash team got stuck in the lift and didnt ask too many searching questions.". He was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 2014.

Medicine

In his book ''The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine'', Le Fanu challenges the conventional view of the history of post-war medicine as a continuous upwards curve of knowledge and achievement. Rather, he argues, it falls into two distinct phases, a "Golden Age", from the 1940s to the 1970s whose twelve "definitive moments" include

antibiotic An antibiotic is a type of antimicrobial substance active against bacteria. It is the most important type of antibacterial agent for fighting bacterial infections, and antibiotic medications are widely used in the treatment and prevention of ...

cortisone Cortisone is a pregnene (21-carbon) steroid hormone. It is a naturally-occurring corticosteroid metabolite that is also used as a pharmaceutical prodrug; it is not synthesized in the adrenal glands. Cortisol is converted by the action of the enzy ...

open heart surgery Cardiac surgery, or cardiovascular surgery, is surgery on the heart or great vessels performed by cardiac surgeons. It is often used to treat complications of ischemic heart disease (for example, with coronary artery bypass grafting); to corr ...

kidney transplants Kidney transplant or renal transplant is the organ transplant of a kidney into a patient with end-stage kidney disease (ESRD). Kidney transplant is typically classified as deceased-donor (formerly known as cadaveric) or living-donor transplantati ...

, the cure of childhood

leukaemia Leukemia ( also spelled leukaemia and pronounced ) is a group of blood cancers that usually begin in the bone marrow and result in high numbers of abnormal blood cells. These blood cells are not fully developed and are called ''blasts'' or ' ...

, etc. Le Fanu claims that this was followed, for complex reasons, by a decline in the rate of therapeutic innovation creating an intellectual vacuum filled by two complementary scientific disciplines,

epidemiology Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution (who, when, and where), patterns and determinants of health and disease conditions in a defined population. It is a cornerstone of public health, and shapes policy decisions and evidenc ...

and

genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar wor ...

, that sought to explain the causes of disease. They were "The Social Theory" that attributed common illnesses such as circulatory disorders and cancer to a "high fat" diet and unhealthy lifestyle and "the New Genetics" that promised to identify the genetic causes of ill health. Le Fanu asserts that these two disciplines continue to dominate medical research but that their promise remains unfulfilled. His 2018 book, ''Too Many Pills'', investigates the reasons behind the threefold rise in the number of prescriptions issued by doctors in Britain over the prior 15 years and the consequences for many of what he calls a "hidden epidemic" of drug-induced illness.

Evolution

Le Fanu is an open critic of

materialism Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materiali ...

(

scientism Scientism is the opinion that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality. While the term was defined originally to mean "methods and attitudes typical of or attributed to natural scientis ...

) and the explanatory power of Darwin's evolutionary theory whose fundamental premises he argued in his book ''Why Us?'' are undermined by the findings of the two revolutionary technical developments of

genome sequencing Whole genome sequencing (WGS), also known as full genome sequencing, complete genome sequencing, or entire genome sequencing, is the process of determining the entirety, or nearly the entirety, of the DNA sequence of an organism's genome at a ...

and

brain imaging Neuroimaging is the use of quantitative (computational) techniques to study the neuroanatomy, structure and function of the central nervous system, developed as an objective way of scientifically studying the healthy human brain in a non-invasive ...

. Le Fanu claims that the discovery of the equivalence of genomes across the vast range of organismic complexity has failed to identify the numerous random genetic mutations that, according to Darwinian theory, would account for the diversity of form of the living world. As for

neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, development ...

, he claims that while sophisticated

PET A pet, or companion animal, is an animal kept primarily for a person's company or entertainment rather than as a working animal, livestock, or a laboratory animal. Popular pets are often considered to have attractive appearances, intelligence, ...

and

MRI Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a medical imaging technique used in radiology to form pictures of the anatomy and the physiological processes of the body. MRI scanners use strong magnetic fields, magnetic field gradients, and radio waves ...

scanning techniques allow scientists to observe the brain in action from the inside, the fundamental question of how its

electrochemistry Electrochemistry is the branch of physical chemistry concerned with the relationship between electrical potential difference, as a measurable and quantitative phenomenon, and identifiable chemical change, with the potential difference as an outco ...

translates into subjective experience and consciousness remains unresolved. According to the ''

New Scientist ''New Scientist'' is a magazine covering all aspects of science and technology. Based in London, it publishes weekly English-language editions in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. An editorially separate organisation publishe ...

'', Le Fanu argues for the existence of a non-material "life force" that may explain many of the mysteries unexplained by material science. Le Fanu is not a

creationist Creationism is the religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of divine creation. Gunn 2004, p. 9, "The ''Concise Oxford Dictionary'' says that creationism is 'th ...

but "makes the argument for a non-materialist realm of both cosmic and psychic creation".

Quotes

'Statistically based knowledge is not reliable. A classic example is the 2008 crash. That was based on a mathematical algorithm.'

References

External links