Better Than Well by Carl Elliott, W.W. Norton, $26.95, ISBN 039305201X
AT first glance, Better than Well is a critical account of how we seek to fix the human condition with “enhancement technologies”. It is about Ritalin and distractibility, Prozac and shyness, skin bleaches and botox, sex-reassignment surgery and voluntary amputation. It is about the marketing of novel diseases such as “social anxiety disorder” around oddball pharmaceuticals and about the $20 million a year that the American Medical Association makes from selling doctors’ biographies to drug companies.
However, behind the laid-back journalistic charm of author Carl Elliott, a professor of…
