Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH, is a social scientist and physician who thinks outside the box when it comes to modern medicine. He also has dire warnings and a scathing critique as well as information to arm patients. He looks at race, gender, and income as factors in illness, and even questions what we mean by 'disease'.

Dr. Christakis teaches an amazing course at Yale called "Death and Dying in the USA". He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2006, and was made a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2010. In 2009, Christakis was named by Time magazine to their annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2009 and in 2010, he was listed by Foreign Policy magazine in their annual list of Top 100 Global Thinkers.

Dr. Christakis joins us to tell us what he means when he says, "The main determinant of whether you live or die has nothing to do with medical care." We talk about his moving personal path to becoming a doctor, what led him to social networks, why most Americans die deaths worthy of the third world, and why he is in the minority in his views of what modern medicine can do.

More at: http://philoofhealth.org/2015/02/social-medicine-with-nicholas-christakis