<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: May Ferrari and buddies get a real good WHIPLASH injury
Review: Ferrari's book is another in the current spate of volumes which (albeit, each quite unintendedly) demonstrate just how inadequate medicine remains -- when it comes to those many conditions in which cause does not make itself conveniently obvious. One would think that medicine's need for "Blame the patient" (or blame his or her "mind", or "subconscious", or "culture", or "secondary gain", or et cetera) would have lessened as medicine became "modern". But as Ferrari shows (again unintendedly), a supposedly modern medicine has no more ability to divine the cause of non-obvious conditions than it displayed back in the days of "railway spine". One might note, from any anatomy text, what "the whiplashed neck" or "the whiplashed spine" adjoins. It adjoins the base of the skull and, immediately there, an organ called "the cerebellum". And, as the virtual flood of new literature on the unsuspected offices of the exquisitely complex "little brain" (cerebellum) well explicates, each and every of the "unexplainable" symptoms of whiplash which medicine generally disparages can now be found as product of a "bruised", badly jarred, or otherwise damaged cerebellum. Lacking organic explanations of "railway spine", medicine turned to Freudian jargon. Lacking organic explanations of "whiplash", we are treated to servings of pseudo-Freudian jargon. This is progress? Some might call it regression. With the new understanding of cerebellar functions, only the lazy or poorly-read physician still needs to invoke "Freud", and to reflexively resort to that handy, ancient and sadly ascientific rubric, "When in doubt, blame the victim". When organic cause is subtle or covert, fraud as well as Freud remains a problem. But the answer to both (and to patients' desperate recourse to "alternative" quackery as well) is to aim the remarkable new machinery of modern medicine at the cerebellum, so that in court as well as in hospital, truth will control. Unfortunately Ferrari's out-of-date Freudian opus will serve only to further delay the first scientific explanation of "whiplash".
Rating:
Summary: a reader
Review: I am sorry to say that this was probably the biggest waste of paper that I have in my library. Dr. Ferrari obviously is cashing in on his 'there is no late-whiplash' syndrome rampage. His reliance on his favorite Lithuanian study reminds me of the witnesses for the tabacco companies raising their right hands and swearing that smoking didn't cause cancer. I thought that doctors took an oath to first do no harm . . . Maybe not in Canada. His pollution of the literature with his tripe culminates in this most worthless collection of misinformation, and I pity anyone shallow or heartless enough to subscribe to his zealot rantings. Donate your money to charity. Don't waste it on this trash.
Rating: 
Summary: Doesn't weed out the junk science!
Review: I have read Ferrari's book and it is incredibly biased against the phenomenon of whiplash. The overwhelming balance of the engineering and medical literature on whiplash is clear that whiplash-associated injuries are very real injuries. What is missing is a critical review of the quality of research in this field. When the insurance industry sets out to do research on whiplash, the sole purpose is to present biased information which can be used by defense lawyers in court. Much of this "junk science" has been refuted overwhelmingly in the medical and engineering literature. Anyone interested in the true nature of whiplash should become familiar with the work of Panjabi et al. at Yale University. This group has performed crash testing with human cadavers and looks at the damage to facet joints of the cervical spine (neck) even in low speed collisions. Ferrari's bias is suspicious, to say the least, and his articles in the literature are weak and often without merit. He has claimed that TMJ (jaw joint) injuries in whiplash accidents do not exist. Perhaps Mr. Ferrari, who has probably never experienced a whiplash injury firsthand, would be willing to volunteer as a human dummy in crash testing to test the hypotheses put forward in this pro-insurance company book. But then, he might feel compelled to seek the truth. Remember, while greed is at the heart of whiplash malingerers, it is also at the heart of the auto insurance industry (we might call it capitalistic or the "profit motive"). However, long after whiplash victims settle their legal cases with the insurance companies, there is a strange event: chronic pain! If litigation and fraud were the driving force behind whiplash, why would whiplash victims continue to seek medical care years and years after their cases settled? The answer is clear: insurnce companies don't want to pay the 95% of claims which are legitimate. Certainly fraud exists. However, it does not exist to the point that insurance companies would have us believe. Listen: Suppose I take two wine glasses filled with wine and strike them together as hard as I can, breaking the glasses? Suppose now that I videotape this event with a high-speed (high-quality) recorder? What happens? Answer: The glasses shatter, and for a split second, the wine stays still. Now suppose I hit the two glasses together as hard as I can, but not quite hard enough to break the glasses. What happens now? Answer: The wine goes all over the place, with no damage to the glasses! Compare to a low speed collision: Does no damage to a car really mean there is no damage to the occupants? OF COURSE NOT! But that is what this book would like you to believe. Nonsense. Utter nonsense!
Rating: 
Summary: Still the best read on the subject
Review: Most books on whiplash have such a limited scope, or are so out-dated by the time they are pubished, that they do not offer much to the lawyer, insurance adjuster, or physician. Despite being published in 1999, this book remains the Bible of Whiplash, being more comprehensive than any other book, explaining everything from facet joints to low-velocity collisions to psychosocial and treatment issues. I notice that Ferrari is the most publsihed person on whiplash in the scientific literature. This adds a credibility to the work that no other author can match. As a Defence lawyer, meeting the Daubert criteria is critical. I thus recommend this book for Defence lawyers and all medical experts who want to stay credible in their work.
Rating:
Summary: Still the best read on the subject
Review: When you read Mr. Ferrari's attempt at an Encyclopedia, someone who was not familiar with his works would be impressed with the title of the treatise and some of the included tabloid information. Unfortunately, his compilation of works is only of the junk science that (mostly) he and other defense-sponsored quacks try to espouse on the complex issue of whiplash injuries. The articles in this issue are out-of-the mainstream, referenced among themselves like an inter-bred family, and completely out of touch with the 10,000 or so published, peer-reviewed works on the subject of whiplash.
For instance, his results of rear-impact collisions in Lithuania suggest you are actually better off if you were in a car crash than the normal population walking down the street - which is quite different from the real-world epidemiology. This text should be a bible only for defense attorneys, and those who have no clue as to what actually happens in the cervical acceleration/deceleration syndrome, are trying to 'pull a fast one' on an uneducated jury, or don't really care. Get Croft or Nordhoff's text if you want ot know what really happens in auto collisions. This trash is a waste of your money.
Rating:
Summary: Ferrari - King of junk science
Review: When you read Mr. Ferrari's attempt at an Encyclopedia, someone who was not familiar with his works would be impressed with the title of the treatise and some of the included tabloid information. Unfortunately, his compilation of works is only of the junk science that (mostly) he and other defense-sponsored quacks try to espouse on the complex issue of whiplash injuries. The articles in this issue are out-of-the mainstream, referenced among themselves like an inter-bred family, and completely out of touch with the 10,000 or so published, peer-reviewed works on the subject of whiplash.
For instance, his results of rear-impact collisions in Lithuania suggest you are actually better off if you were in a car crash than the normal population walking down the street - which is quite different from the real-world epidemiology. This text should be a bible only for defense attorneys, and those who have no clue as to what actually happens in the cervical acceleration/deceleration syndrome, are trying to 'pull a fast one' on an uneducated jury, or don't really care. Get Croft or Nordhoff's text if you want ot know what really happens in auto collisions. This trash is a waste of your money.
<< 1 >>
| 
