Introductions to the subject

Biomedical platforms: realigning the normal and the pathological in late-twentieth-century medicine

P. Keating and A. Cambrosio MIT Press, 2003, 544pp. $55.00. ISBN 0262112760.

Interesting sociologically-based review of the coming together of biological and medical approaches to form ‘biomedicine’. Useful offset to dichotomies underpinning science/technology, basic/applied, as well as biology/medicine itself. Notes and references pp 341–525.

Calculus for biology and medicine

C. Neuhauser See entry no. 1896

Dicing with death: chance, risk and health

S. Senn Cambridge University Press, 2003, 251pp. £14.99. ISBN 0521540232.

Explanation of how statistics determines many decisions about medical care, from allocating resources for health, to determining which drugs to license, to cause-and-effect in relation to disease.

‘[a] remarkable achievement … In a slim paperback that is best read cover to cover. Stephen Senn has attempted to do for medical statistics what Stephen Hawking did for physics in A Brief History of Time … And Simon Singh did for pure mathematics in Fermat's Last Theorem. I think he has succeeded.’ (British Medical Journal)

Essential medical statistics

B.R. Kirkwood and J.A.C. Sterne 2nd edn, Blackwell Science, 2003, 501pp. £22.95. ISBN 0865428719.

Successfully builds on the strength of the 1st edn by ‘keeping the emphasis on enabling the reader to know which method to apply when’. Responds to growth in use of ITbased techniques by covering methods formerly considered too advanced for an introductory text. Very well written and laid-out.

‘the breadth of coverage of the book is excellent … a rather different approach to teaching medical statistics.’ (Statistics in Medicine)

‘This book is statistically correct. That is enough to distinguish it from most of its competitors.’ (British Medical Journal)