Biography
James Le Fanu
James Le Fanu is a Doctor, columnist, social commentator and historian of science and medicine. He was born in 1950 and spent his childhood in Scotland, East Africa, Yugoslavia and Cyprus. He studied the humanities at Ampleforth College before switching to medicine, graduating from Cambridge University and the Royal London Hospital in 1974. He subsequently worked in the Renal Transplant Unit at Cardiology Departments of the Royal Free and St Mary’s Hospital in London.
For the past twenty years he has combined medical practice with writing a twice weekly column for the Sunday and Daily Telegraph as well as contributing reviews and articles to The Times, Spectator, Prospect, The Oldie, The British Medical Journal and Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
His (much acclaimed) ‘The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine’ charts the change in fortunes of medicine over the past sixty years from the supreme achievements of its ‘Twelve Definitive Moments’ to its current discontents. His most recent book ‘Why Us?: How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves’ investigates the paradox where the major developments in genetics (including the Human Genome Project) and neuroscience of the past two decades have inadvertently revealed the limits of an exclusively scientific account of the form and attributes of the living world and the exceptionality of the human mind.
He has in addition made original contributions to controversies over human embryo experiments, the social and environmental causes of illness and ‘Shaken Baby Syndrome’. He is married to the publisher Judith Annan, has two children Frederick and Allegra and lives in South London.
Recent Publications
James Le Fanu’s most recent publications include:
The ‘Fully Revised and Updated’ second edition of ‘The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine’ including an epilogue ‘Ten Years On’ exploring the major developments of the last decade.
“Medicine has become the most visible symbol of the fulfillment of the great Enlightenment Project where scientific progress would vanquish the twin perils of ignorance and disease to the benefit of all. And yet the more powerful and prestigious it has become, the greater the impetus to extend its influence further, resulting in the progressive ‘medicalisation’ of people’s lives to no good purpose … this takes many forms from the over investigation and over treatment of minor symptoms to the inappropriate use of life-sustaining technologies, anxiety mongering about trivial (or non existent) threats to health and people’s everyday lives, and the propagation of unreasonable expectations about what the current state of medical research can reasonably be expected to achieve.”
Have we discovered it all? (Daily Telegraph) investigates the current state of medical research and notes “the more generous its funding, the more daunting the tidal wave of articles in academic journals, the more striking the paradox that the rate of medical innovation—discoveries that really make a difference—is a fraction of what it was thirty or forty years ago.”
Science’s Dead End (Prospect Magazine) considers the prospects for further scientific advance in the wake of the supreme intellectual achievement of the past sixty years in permitting us, for the first time, to ‘hold in our mind’s eye’ the entire history of the universe from the moment of the Big Bang until yesterday.
Aping Mankind (TheTablet) and Metaphysics Resurgent (Brain). These two extended book reviews consider first the philosopher Raymond Tallis’s critique of the prevailing reductionist account of the human experience and, secondly, the implications of the most recent findings in genetics and neuroscience for the troubled relationship between science and religion.
Profitable Wonders. This popular series on the ‘wonders’ of biology, natural history and related subjects appears monthly in The Oldie magazine—featuring the murmuration of starlings, the regenerative powers of the salamander, the ‘miracle’ of homeostasis, the marvels of skin and the heart and the extraordinary attributes of the living world from bacteria to elephants via the earthworm and the humming bird.
To contact James, please send an email.
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