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by Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, 246 pp, $25, ISBN 0-226-11366-3, Chicago, Ill, University of Chicago Press, 2005.

JAMA. 2006;295:1588-1589.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

The cryptically titled Dr Golem is the third in a series: the authors, university professors who study science and technology, have previously collaborated on The Golem: What You Should Know About Science and The Golem at Large: What You Should Know About Technology. (A golem is a manmade being of Jewish legend, created from inanimate material. As such, it can be considered as having no particular intelligence of its own. It is not necessarily a monster in the way of, say, Frankenstein's monster, but rather appears to be a creature without much of a mind and certainly no soul, dumbly doing its appointed tasks.) Based on published reviews, it appears that the first two books were concerned with revealing the imperfections of science and technology.

Dr Golem seems to depart from this formula somewhat—appropriately so, since in the preface the authors acknowledge that the origin and role of medicine . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Omar A. Khan, MD, MHS, Reviewer
University of Vermont
Burlington
omar.khan@vtmednet.org

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