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 journalis ...

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''. He is married to publisher Juliet Annan.

Life

He was educated at Ampleforth College 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 refound ...

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 in 1974, and worked as a junior doctor at the Renal Transplant Unit and Cardiology Department of the Royal Free Hospital and St Mary’s Hospital in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, 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 dow ...

. 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'' ( ...

'', ''

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 ''Th ...

'', '' The British Medical Journal'' and '' Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine''.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'' 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 atmos ...

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 possi ...

, "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 ...

s, cortisone,

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 c ...

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

, 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 evi ...

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 work ...

, 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 ( scientism) 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 and brain imaging. 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 Darwinism is a theory of biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and others, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that ...

, would account for the diversity of form of the living world. As for

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

, he claims that while sophisticated PET and MRI 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 out ...

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 publish ...

'', 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 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