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The End of Illness

3.44 of 5 stars 3.44 · rating details · 1,288 ratings · 212 reviews

Can we live robustly until our last breath? Do we have to suffer from debilitating conditions and sickness? Is it possible to add more vibrant years to our lives? In The End of Illness, David B. Agus, MD, one of the world’s leading cancer doctors, researchers, and technology innovators, tackles these fundamental questions, challenging long-held wisdoms and dismantling misp...more Can we live robustly until our last breath? Do we have to suffer from debilitating conditions and sickness? Is it possible to add more vibrant years to our lives? In The End of Illness, David B. Agus, MD, one of the world’s leading cancer doctors, researchers, and technology innovators, tackles these fundamental questions, challenging long-held wisdoms and dismantling misperceptions about what “health” means. With a blend of storytelling, landmark research, and provocative ideas on health, Dr. Agus presents an eye-opening picture of the human body and all of the ways it works—and fails—showing us how a new perspective on our individual health will allow each of us to achieve that often elusive but now reachable goal of a long, vigorous life. When Dr. Agus decided to pursue a career in oncology, many of his mentors questioned his choice. Why, they asked, would a promising young doctor want to enter a field known for its inescapably grim outcomes? But it was precisely the lack of progress that inspired Dr. Agus to join the war on cancer. He moved away from the modern methods of the medical establishment, which aim to reduce our afflictions to a single point. Instead, as he does in this book, Dr. Agus argues for the adoption of a systemic view—a way of honoring our bodies as complex, whole systems. This outlook informs how we can avoid all illnesses—not just cancer. Dr. Agus empowers us to take charge of our individual health in personal, customized ways we could not have imagined before.

This indispensable book is not only a manifesto—a call for revising the way we think about health—it’s also filled with practical but impossible-to-ignore suggestions, including:

• How taking multivitamins and supplements could significantly increase our risk for cancer over time.

• Why sitting down most of the day, despite a strenuous morning workout, can be as bad as or worse than smoking.

• How sneaky sources of daily inflammation—from high heels to the common cold—can lead to a fatal heart attack, and even rob us of our sanity.

• How three inexpensive medications—aspirin, statins, and an annual flu vaccine—can substantially change the course of our health for the better.

• How taking shortcuts to health via blending fruits and vegetables, and sometimes even by purchasing what we think is “fresh,” could be shortchanging our health.

• The single most important thing we can do today to preserve our health and happiness that costs absolutely nothing.

Dr. Agus also offers insights and access to breathtaking and powerful new technologies that promise to transform medicine in our generation. In the course of offering recommendations, he emphasizes his belief that there is no “right” answer, no master guide that is “one size fits all.” Each one of us must get to know our bodies in uniquely personal ways, and he shows us exactly how to do that so that we can individually create a plan for wellness.

The End of Illness is a bold call for all of us to become our own personal health advocates, and a dramatic departure from orthodox thinking. This is a seminal work that promises to revolutionize how we live.(less)

Hardcover, 352 pages

Published January 17th 2012 by Free Press (first published December 27th 2011)

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Nov 27, 2012 Howard rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Howard by: Fortune Magazine

Terrific insights into a culture that in which health cures are suspect and 'science' is created by the marketing departments of drug and vitamin companies. The author states conclusively that certain vitamin supplements, simultaneous with having no practical value are proven to promote illness rather than health. If true this says volumes about a current mindset that suggests the solution for challenging issues is to throw money at them. (As in 'did you know that certain vitamins suspect as act...more

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Apr 29, 2013 Kristine rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

Health books and articles can be a bit frustrating to read. How long will their findings and imparted wisdom hold out under scrutiny? Who knows? Well, what about this one THE END OF ILLNESS? Well, if we could fast forward five, ten or twenty years, perhaps we'd know better how to evaluate this one. Certainly, the author has some impressive credentials, so let's start there.

Dr. David B. Agus is a professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medi...more Health books and articles can be a bit frustrating to read. How long will their findings and imparted wisdom hold out under scrutiny? Who knows? Well, what about this one THE END OF ILLNESS? Well, if we could fast forward five, ten or twenty years, perhaps we'd know better how to evaluate this one. Certainly, the author has some impressive credentials, so let's start there.

Dr. David B. Agus is a professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and Viterbi School of Engineering and heads USC's Westside Cancer Center and the Center for Applied Molecular Medicine, for starters. (More about his "additional" credentials in a sec...)

So, of course, readers may find it interesting to hear his take on health and wellness, clearly an assumption by the publicity machine that received big name back-of-the-book blurbs ( including former VP Al Gore and Nobel laureate in physics Murray Gell-mann) and that orchestrated various television/media appearances, among them the Daily Show.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu...

In this tech age, you can listen to him yourself. However, I might just caution that whatever he says in an interview will sound more simplistic; if you have objections or "yes, but" listening moments, please consult the actual book since in print his pronouncements are given in a MUCH more nuanced way with caveats, cautions, exceptions, supporting research details, and so forth.

The overarching message is that individuals need to take a personalized approach to our own wellness in a partnership approach with our doctors (rather than treat our doctors as holy experts)-- and that medicine needs to shift its approach to a more whole body or system approach to make headway with the big health challenges of our era: Alzheimers and cancer, for example.

Now, for his "other" credentials. Dr. Agus is a co-founderof two personalized medicine companies: Navigenics and Applied Proteomics. Keep that in mind as you read the book. He is indeed in the forefront (so in the know) of a couple breaking-news type of trends for the future of personalized medicine --- not necessarily a bad thing, but he may be biased in his estimates of the extent of the impact or in how soon the progress will occur. Chapter 5, for instance, introduces his passion for using proteins to diagnose illness, still in the early stages of a revolution he thinks is coming in proteomics (or, perhaps, from his business side, hopes).

His prescriptions for wellness are not particularly revolutionary for folks who read up on this field -- or just listen to great-grandma's commonsense. Though there are a few points that buck the commonsense trend (with explanations for why he thinks as he does.) But, then, many of us need to be reminded to set a healthy routine for eating, sleeping, and exercising. Agus also explains some of the reactions of the body when we don't.

And, Argus also reminds us not to confuse genetic information with OUTCOME. He shows various pie charts (circles) with the percentage piece of environment/individuality upon the genetics to illustrate that DNA is not at all a fixed and definite destiny for illness expression.

Now, since Argus makes a point not to sit too long, I need to wrap this up, so I can get up and away from this computer screen -- even though I was out walking and doing errands for a couple hours before sitting down to write this book response!

So here's my wrap up: I'd feel much better if each one of us who reads this book simply evaluates its usefulness for ourselves. (less)

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Apr 01, 2013 Pearl rated it 3 of 5 stars

Another in the latest series of advice that tells us everything we've been told before about how to be healthy is wrong. What's a person to do? Like my mother always told me, I guess, use common sense.

This author has excellent credentials; but then so do many of the others giving advice, who apparently are wrong. David B. Argus, MD, is a professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, heads USC's Westside Cancer Center and the Center for Ap...more Another in the latest series of advice that tells us everything we've been told before about how to be healthy is wrong. What's a person to do? Like my mother always told me, I guess, use common sense.

This author has excellent credentials; but then so do many of the others giving advice, who apparently are wrong. David B. Argus, MD, is a professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, heads USC's Westside Cancer Center and the Center for Applied Molecular Medicine and is one of the world's leading cancer doctors and pioneering bio-medical researchers. He's a big advocate of personalized medicine, a field that is not fully developed yet but, he believes, is the ways medicine will be practiced in the not too distant future.

He explains in some detail how each of our systems is unique; therefore there is no "one size fits all." He also bases his recommendations on the theory of homeostasis. Our bodies are always seeking balance, he says. This is a major reason he wants us to throw away vitamin supplements, especially the mega-doses that have been in favor recently. (The FDA, it seems, is constantly under pressure to up its recommendations of the RDA and often does.) We don't need these supplements and, in most cases, they are actually harmful because they upset our system's balance, which will then expend effort trying to get back into balance.

Among his recommendations are: 600 IUs of Vitamin D/day is plenty (get that from sun, salmon, etc. not supplements); 30 milligrams of Vitamin C/day is sufficient (that's equivalent to 1/2 an orange); do not take supplemental beta carotene. Do drink 1 glass of red wine 5x/week; do eat GOOD fat, not low fat; get your "fresh" vegetables from your local farmer's market to be sure they're fresh, otherwise frozen vegetables are probably more nutritious; take a baby aspirin every day to help prevent blood clots leading to heart attack and stroke; and, what seems quite controversial to me, take statins if you're over 40, to lower cholesterol and inflammation in the body, among other things. Of course, we should only do all of these things in consultation with our doctor; but since our (our at least my) doctor has recommended many of the supplements and dosages this doctor is against, I don't see how this will help. His book provides the detailed reasoning for most of his recommendations, some quite scientific.

He has standard, but good advice, on moving - don't sit for long periods - MOVE. Do cardio exercises, do exercises for strength training; do stretching exercises.

And a final category of recommendations is to keep a regular schedule. Just as the body is always seeking homeostasis, it likes predictability. So eat at the same time, go to bed at the same time, get up at the same time, and so on.

And, all this will lead to immortality? No, that's not what the doctor promises. That's not what he means by his title, "the end of illness." He does believe that we should be able to remain healthy until "lights out."

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Dec 09, 2012 Keith Swenson rated it 5 of 5 stars

I give five stars to books that are not only excellent, but ones that I feel that everyone should read. It is important.

In a world filled with books attempting to explain simple cause/effect relationships, Agus has the sanity to argue against reductionism -- that the human body is complex, and we should carefully assess all advice against your own experience. Everyone's body is unique, and what works for one will often not work for another. Far from dropping you into a sea of endless possibiliti...more I give five stars to books that are not only excellent, but ones that I feel that everyone should read. It is important.

In a world filled with books attempting to explain simple cause/effect relationships, Agus has the sanity to argue against reductionism -- that the human body is complex, and we should carefully assess all advice against your own experience. Everyone's body is unique, and what works for one will often not work for another. Far from dropping you into a sea of endless possibilities, Agus provides a life boat of rationality and common sense to help you chart your own course.

His assessment of the American medical establishment along with our obesity crisis is direct and lucid. It is not healthcare, it is "sick care". Throughout the book: a small price for taking care of your health will pay back many-fold by preventing expensive and inconvenient illness. To change this you, dear reader, must take control of your own health: eat real food, exercise regularly, avoid vitamins and supplements, avoid sources of inflammation, prepare for meetings with your doctor, etc.

Quite a bit is said about how ridiculous it is to take a single measurement, such as amount of LDL-cholesterol, and consider a drug to be effective only on that one measurement. Your body is a complex system, and everything effects everything. It is a waste of time to look for "magic bullets" in medicine that address particular symptoms. We need a NEW MODEL.

"Inflamation is a telltale sign that something isn't right in your body." While inflammation is the body's mechanism for healing, it is also by itself harmful, and should be avoided. There are some inexpensive things that can be done with amazing results: one baby aspirin a day (for 5 years or more) can reduce your chance of dying from cancer from 10 to 60%! He also says everyone over 40 should be taking statins.

Love this quote: "It is important to approach your health in general from a place of lack of understanding. Honor the body and its relationship to disease as a complex emergent system that you may never fully comprehend."

Most of his advice is well within the reach of normal people: get plenty of sleep (and surprising studies that show the health benefit of this) Move and exercise regularly. Keeping a regular schedule allows your body to maintain homeostatis which keeps you healthier. Eat simple and fresh foods (and how frozen is sometimes healthier than 'fresh' food that has been sitting in the store for days).

He also has some thoughts about where medicine is (and should be) going. More individualized measurements (like the Quantified Self movement). He is a big believer in the emerging field of Proteomics which he feels might be able to give us a better picture of how the system of the body is performing, and if done regularly over time could give you a dynamic indication of problems before you notice other symptoms. It is not here today, but something I certainly am going to watch in the coming years.

Most of all, I like his practical, pragmatic advice: "Be wary of headlines that tell you what is good or bad for you. Scrutinize data before you accept it as dogma." He does not claim that there are simple answers, but instead encourages everyone to take an active role in figuring what is right for you. There are tools that can help, it is time to start using them.

Like I said: everyone should read this book.(less)

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Nov 22, 2012 Anna L Conti rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: health

Too many words for too little info. But the basic advice he offered was sound: #1 Question everything, especially health news that appears in the general media, including online. #2 Vitamin supplements are probably a waste of money for most people and might be harmful for some people. #3 Michael Pollan got it right about food - follow his advice. #4 Wear comfortable shoes. #5 Exercise daily and avoid sitting for prolonged periods. #6 Maintain a regular schedule for meals, sleep, exercise. #7 be...more

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Jul 01, 2012 Jennifer rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is written by a cancer specialist who is also a professor of medicine and engineering at USC and cofounder of two personalized medicine companies that sequence DNA. It distills his wisdom from his practice and research with some rather common sense advice to promoting health and longevity. This advice includes getting our vitamins from food rather than supplements, regular exercise, maintaining a regular schedule of meals and sleep, and monitoring one's overall state of health. He beli...more

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Jun 30, 2012 Jerry rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: science

I found a few interesting things in this book. There are some chapters that cover new developments in medicine such as personalized medicine, genomics, proteomics, effectiveness of supplements, microbiome enterotypes and cancer.

Then there are some practical guidelines that you could act on. “Keep a strict, predictable schedule 365 days a year that has you eating, sleeping, and exercising at about the same times day in and day out. Avoid napping unless you nap every day at the same time.” People...more

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Jun 18, 2012 Kathy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Dr. Agus is an oncologist, but this book is not a treatise on cancer, and does not come close to Mukherjee's book "The Emperor of all Maladies". But Agus makes some fascinating claims that challenge my thoughts about things. He is slightly contradicting, for instance, he discourages the use of multivitamins and denounces the concept of "antioxidants" that is so prevalent today. He claims that everything we pop in our mouths, including multivitamins, can have a profound effect on our bodies, and...more

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Jun 12, 2012 Patrick Farr rated it 3 of 5 stars

Dr. Agus does a nice job of making you think critically of how important symbiosis is within the context of the human body. The same things that can benefit your body in moderate doses can harm it in excessive doses. Not groundbreaking stuff, but he is able to translate the medical processes of how this can affect you at a cellular level very well.

The idea of Proteomics (analysis of proteins) is the future of cearly diagnosis of disease. The interaction of proteins will be able to tell us ahead...more

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May 02, 2012 Natalie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Agus contends that we shouldn't call it "cancer" but instead say that a person is in the process of "cancering." The premise of this book is that the body must be taken together as an entire system in order to understand and affect health. Cancer is not a noun here, but a verb, "cancering." Agus believes that we are not curing cancer because medical research is fixated on the idea that there is a single antidote (like penicillin) that will eradicate this disease when, instead, the disease is a r...more

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Apr 30, 2012 Ann rated it 1 of 5 stars

What an annoying book! Agus is a cancer doctor and named his book "The End of Illness," so I had great hopes for it. But he admitted that he couldn't really cure cancer or end illness. Even worse, he wrote a book that read like a textbook, rambled like a boring old professor and offered the same advice we all heard from our mothers. Obviously, we all feel better when we get enough sleep, eat a balanced diet and get regular exercise. But, he actually said that high heels can lead to the kind of i...more

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Apr 20, 2012 Allison rated it 5 of 5 stars

Loved this book. First heard about it on the daily show, and the author cited two of my other all-time favorite authors: leavitt/dubner and micheal pollan. Those 3 endorsements and I was sold. It was also good to read a book like this since it was recently published, and the studies were current. I thought Agus had a unique and convincing perspective as an experienced oncologist and his challenge of popular medical myths (juicing, multivitamins, timing of meals/sleep, etc.) was really somewhat f...more

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Apr 01, 2012 Adam Jacobson rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: science

There are doctor’s books that move me to great fits of jealousy. How can someone like Siddhartha Mukhergee writing the Emperor of All Maladies create such a work while being a top end physician? Thankfully for my ego, if not for the book, the End of Illness prompted no such feelings.
Agus starts out with an interesting premise. The germ model of disease which worked so well to eliminate typhus and cholera just doesn’t apply to conditions like cancer and heart disease. These illnesses are systemat...more

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Mar 30, 2012 Lia rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: health

Hm. Well, the paragraphs are very long and wordy, the examples are meandering and often not applicable, and he has a very hard time getting to the point. I don't know how many times he would say things like, "So, at this point, you're probably wondering what I would recommend," and then he would just blather on instead of saying what he recommended. So, basically, the writing is bad. In fact, the whole visual layout of the book makes it very clear that he is not trying to communicate a new parad...more

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Mar 17, 2012 Jay Connor rated it 5 of 5 stars

Here is one of those rare books that confirm your intuition while upsetting 50+ years of conventional wisdom. What is most daunting is that the naked Emperor revealed here is the medical/pharma/insurance complex. This apparently wayward field is consuming ever-increasing portions of our GDP while delivering diminishing outcomes. We’ve all heard of the disparities between US per capita spending on health and healthy outcomes compared to most of the rest of the developed world. In “End of Illness,...more Here is one of those rare books that confirm your intuition while upsetting 50+ years of conventional wisdom. What is most daunting is that the naked Emperor revealed here is the medical/pharma/insurance complex. This apparently wayward field is consuming ever-increasing portions of our GDP while delivering diminishing outcomes. We’ve all heard of the disparities between US per capita spending on health and healthy outcomes compared to most of the rest of the developed world. In “End of Illness,” we see that this gap will never be closed if we continue to think about health the way we have been.

As with so many of our underachieving human endeavors of the past half-century, David Agus describes a problem of equal parts frame and fragmentation. In essence Agus is calling for us to look at the body as a system – at our health, systematically. Think of it as a delicate interwoven symphony of choice and genetics. Seems logical and appropriate. Right? Except when you consider that every way we approach thinking about the body is fragmented and silo-ed. There are thousands of specialists, who study one element of the whole: walled off from the unintended consequences of their good intentions. Research – especially the pharmaceutical pursuit of the next $1Billion drug – is all targeted on the element and not the whole. Even the way we keep medical data precludes us seeing beyond the specific. This is the same problem that I have seen for decades in how we conceive achieving results in our communities or our schools.

The frame needs to shift from combating disease to ending illness (perfecting health). The dilemma is that all of the rewards (money) have been set to the multiple interventions, mostly after something bad occurs: operations, drugs, even vitamin and food supplements. As in most western paradoxes, in order to understand why we work the way we do, in the face of suboptimal or non-existent results, follow the money. Sickness has many more investors than health.

Though Agus’ recommendations are important, I think the larger value of the “End of Illness” is that it requires us to marvel at our flexible, self-correcting, human body and how it has been almost able to adapt to the harsh, alien environment of today’s medical model.
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Mar 14, 2012 Lisa Roney rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: illness-disability-medicine

I read this book with some eagerness, as I’m always glad to hear a whole-systems approach to medicine. However, I ended up being disappointed. I am sure that Dr. Agus is a highly intelligent man who has made strides in his field of oncology, but I am unimpressed with the job that his ghostwriter did. The book relies very heavily on standard health advice—get plenty of sleep and exercise, eat whole foods, try to be less sedentary, etc. And even what’s offered as “new”—take baby aspirin and a stat...more I read this book with some eagerness, as I’m always glad to hear a whole-systems approach to medicine. However, I ended up being disappointed. I am sure that Dr. Agus is a highly intelligent man who has made strides in his field of oncology, but I am unimpressed with the job that his ghostwriter did. The book relies very heavily on standard health advice—get plenty of sleep and exercise, eat whole foods, try to be less sedentary, etc. And even what’s offered as “new”—take baby aspirin and a statin drug after age 40, throw out your vitamin supplements, and wear comfortable shoes—are really not all that new. If you hadn’t heard about these debates and suggestions already, then you weren’t paying much attention.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t good things about this book. I celebrate any physician who is trying to focus on preventive medicine and who believes in empowering people with information about their health. He is absolutely right that we need to do things differently in health care, and he has some good ideas about what some of those things are. His orientation toward the wealthy and the celebrity aspects of his work lead him astray a bit. But I do think his intentions are a step in the right direction.

Still, for me, this book is flawed in a few important ways:

1) The entire first part felt a lot like an infomercial for genetic testing. Dr. Agus admits that he is part owner of a genetic testing corporation, which he names, but that still didn’t ease my sense of having paid for a book that was a big promotion for his profit-making corporation. It was almost as if they sat around the corporate board room and asked, “How can we get more customers? Oh, let’s put out a book that is really an ad. We’ll have profits from the book AND more genetic testing customers.” And the thing is that Agus’s particular corporation doesn’t get good reviews online. Wired noted that it is overpriced even compared with similar companies. And most of us do not have health insurance that will help pay for it, nor do we have doctors that can interpret the information obtained. Dr. Agus’s fantasy of health care that is tailored to the individual based on genetic screening is both futuristic and out of the reach of most people financially.

2) In his chapter on tossing out vitamin supplements, Agus notes two things: a) correlation is not the same as causation and b) animal and petri-dish studies don’t always apply to the whole human person. I couldn’t be happier for someone to say this. Yet, as the book progresses and Agus turns to his causes, he uses the same kind of questionable study results as though correlation IS causation and as though animal and lab studies CAN be generalized to people. There are many examples, but, for instance, on p. 255, he uses a study of rats to claim that people need downtime. Now, I believe in downtime, but this study doesn’t prove its need. He also does this with the issue of “positive” people living longer or surviving cancer longer—a chicken and egg question if ever there was one. And he notes in cavalier fashion that “study after study” shows that happier people live longer. That does not mean, I will remind him, that the happiness causes people to live longer. This is a classic confusion of correlation and causation, which he criticized before. Maybe I’m missing something, and I certainly don’t have the same level of expertise at analyzing medical studies that Agus has. But, something is inconsistent here.

3) Agus claims that we need to become personally responsible for our health, and I am certainly a person who has years of experience doing so. But he hedges about the need for universal health care. While he does cite the brutal statistics involving our health care system (p. 296-297), he also notes that “we need health-care reform at a much more basic and fundamental level before we can get to the financial end of it” (p. 279). I think he has it backwards. In fact, Agus calls on all of us to gather our own health data and share it fearlessly so that large-scale analysis of such data can be conducted. That is a great idea, but it is not likely to happen as long as the health insurance industry is able to disenfranchise any of us at a moment’s notice and as long as people are discriminated against because of their health standing, and, in fact, can’t get independent health insurance with certain pre-existing conditions. Agus notes that many corporate fitness programs do collect data anonymously and preserve individuals’ privacy. Would that I trusted that would always continue. But I know full well that those policies can change with the political climate. As long as profit is the motive for the health insurance industry, then some individuals will always have the potential to have their health information held against them. To assert otherwise is unrealistic.
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Mar 08, 2012 Donald Crane rated it 5 of 5 stars

If you're interested in tangible, practical steps you can take to control your own health destiny, read this book. It's a fascinating glimpse into what the future may hold in terms of technologies to really understand your own personal health profile - what your genetic predilections are, for example. The book also talks about the fundamentals of good health: a healthy diet, regular exercise, and also weighs in on vitamins and supplements and statins.

Agus is a fairly famous oncologist who has al...more

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Feb 27, 2012 Erinn rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a good book for patients to read. It will help you be a better advocate for your own health. It will help you organize your medical information and get the most out of your doctor visits. It will help us docs to focus on the most important problems. Due to the squeeze from insurance companies we have less time than ever to spend the time we want with our patients so it's imperative that everyone comes prepared. Before I see a patient, I spend time reviewing the chart, labs, reports etc....more

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Feb 20, 2012 Robert Frost rated it 3 of 5 stars

Turn on the television and you won't have to wait long to see a story about the new magic drug or food. America likes nothing better than a magic pill to solve whatever is wrong. Odds are that the medical study praising the magic drug or food will in six months be pushed out of mind by another study saying the opposite. The problem is that these studies and the media view the human body as simple. It isn't simple - it's an incredibly complex suite of systems. The same magic food that in abundanc...more

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Feb 10, 2012 Liz Murray rated it 4 of 5 stars

Ok I haven't read all of this book, in fact I've only read a couple of chapters but I think it's the type of book that's good to have on hand and in any case not all the chapters are relevant to me, thankfully. I appreciate the common sense approach here and have already rethought my approach to supplements. Cynically it had me thinking "I wonder if the supplement companies have tried to ban the book?" If you take Dr Agus' advice and read about why so many supplements are unnecessary you won't b...more

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May 04, 2013 Don Weidinger rated it 5 of 5 stars

manifesto for health, heart disease 70% imp in last 50 years, cancer is same, 1923 physiology distracted by germs and diagnose treat, worldwide body mass increase and diabetes, read behind headlines for genomic ancestry, concert of habits to fine tune health, medicine as art of observation and interpretation, 20% women lazy thyroid, 75mg aspirin decrease cancer 10-60%, Darwin got it wrong monk Mendel got it right, D many hereditary mechanisms categorically wrong followed by echoes of desperation...more

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May 29, 2012 Kara rated it 1 of 5 stars

Absolutely the worst medical book I've read. Agus's suggestions include starting statins at 40, get genetically screened, avoiding wear heels, and reading Michael Pollan's book (the only thing I agreed with, and he must have mentioned it 10 times). Oh, yeah, Agus happens to be the owner of a genetic screening company. And he never mentions that statins happen to have a whole host of side effects, some of which are not inconsequential -- liver damage, type 2 diabetes. But who cares about credibil...more

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Apr 19, 2013 Stefan rated it 1 of 5 stars

Terrible writing. Can't decide if Agus simply had no editors, or if they sat this job out. Seriously considering avoiding Free Press' books in the future. Too many words- full of distracting idioms, self-serving anecdotes, self-important strutting and name-dropping, not to mention outright typos and ridiculous filler sentences. And my most-hated phrase "I've always said..." and its many variations. Here's a real example, the introductory sentence from chapter 13: "I am routinely dazzled by stori...more

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Jun 07, 2012 Tom rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Agus' book is a tour de force of hope and wisdom in a world growing increasing cynical about Western medicine. Agus recommends Pollan's books and it points out Western medicine has given a 100% increase in life expectancy over a century and a half despite our increasing sedentary lifestyle, hope in prescription over nutrition, and tendency to overeat high-calorie, low-nutrition prepared and packaged foods. (I am reminded here of a quote from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: "Food to...more

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May 24, 2012 Adam rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a tough one. While Agus dispenses a fair bit of actionable and practical advice, he gets bogged down in reiteration; the structure is a little wonky, and the book could have lost 100 of its 300 pages without sacrificing much of its effectiveness. Most of the advice isn't exactly revolutionary (exercise - good! erratic sleep patterns - bad!), but he does an effective job of underscoring the dramatic effects of, say, routinely sitting on your butt reading and reviewing books (oops). He cov...more

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Dec 19, 2012 Joni rated it 3 of 5 stars

I didn't hate this book but neither was I thrilled. It wasn't the most exciting read, the beginning you can tell that he is an oncologist, alot of info re cancer. Basically he didn't say anything that none of us haven't already heard. We need to excercise, watch what we put in our mouths, get sufficient sleep. I did find the fact that he basically slammed juicing (which I was about to try) & he also was particular about vitamins, what we need should come mainly from our foods & the way o...more

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Jul 09, 2012 Jen rated it 3 of 5 stars

I found this book fascinating and annoying. I wasn't bothered by the conversational writing style, but the book did lack a certain intellectual rigor that made me question Dr. Agus's authority. If you're going to cite data such as "119 out of 500 tennis players suffer from X" you need to give me some context. Is this higher incidence than the general population? The author also provides some contradictory arguments without acknowledging the contradictions. Can you be overweight and physically fi...more

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May 21, 2012 Andrea rated it 3 of 5 stars

I definitely learned some interesting things, particularly about the present and future of medical research and the directions medicine may be going, but as for the message of the book, the author had too much of a "technology will save us all" attitude for me, and was a bit condescending at times. He suggests that we should not take vitamins, yet most people should be on statin drugs after age 40. Hmm... That made me suspicious, and though he also outlines some basic, common sense health advice...more

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Mar 11, 2012 Cate rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Cate by: Jon Stewart

The title and back-jacket reviews of this book had me expecting some mind-blowing revelations about health. So, I'm a little disappointed to walk away with nothing more profound than the notion that I should ditch my multivitamin, pay attention to what I eat (which, frankly, I already got from Michael Pollan two years ago), and attempt to get my eating/sleeping/exercising done on a regular schedule. Oh, and also I should probably discourage football playing for my boys...!

That said, Agus does a...more

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Feb 10, 2012 Steve rated it 4 of 5 stars

Really enjoyed the book. After reading Transcend by Kurzweil some of the points in End of Illness felt less fleshed out and more elementary, so I'd recommend Transcend overall. This book's strength is the idea that the body is a complex, interrelated system and that the diseases that confront us today are a malfunction of that system and will not have a magic bullet line polio or antibiotics. We need to control our health through the interventions we know work (I.e. diet, exercise, sleep, routin...more

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About David B. Agus

Dr. David B. Agus is one of the world’s leading cancer doctors and pioneering biomedical researchers. Over the past twenty years he’s received acclaim for his innovations in medicine and contributions to new technologies that will change how all of us maintain our health. He’s also built a reputation for having a unique way of looking at the relationship of the body to health and disease. He expla...more

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