Artificial Happiness : The Dark Side of the New Happy Class

Ronald Dworkin, Fellow at the Hudson Institute, has written a book of social commentary that combines the politics of healthcare and medical ethics with several momentous changes that have dramatically altered the relationship among doctors and patients, creating what Dworkin dubs "artificial happiness." He examines the rise of psychotropic drugs; alternative medicine; the belief in endorphins as a way to maximize health through exercise; and medicine's investigations of spirituality all during the past thirty years fitting them together into a story that puts Americans at the center of a novel social experiment: helping people feel happy independent of the facts in their lives. Though well-intentioned, Dworkin identifies a dark side, asserting that Prozac, for instance, is freezing people in unsatisfactory relationships and jobs, nullifying their impulse to change, because of the "happiness" induced by the medicine.

Ronald W. Dworkin is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, and an anesthesiologist at Greater Baltimore Medical Center.