Is lowering your temperature when you have a fever helpful? Do you really need to finish every course of antibiotics? Or could some of the treatments you think are healing you actually be harming you?

Medicine has significantly advanced in the last few decades. But while we have learned a lot, we still rely on medical interventions that are vastly out of date and can adversely affect our health.

In this game-changing book, infectious-disease expert and Rotavirus vaccine inventor Dr Offit highlights fifteen common medical interventions still recommended and practised by medical professionals, despite clear evidence that they are harmful - including the treatment of acid reflux in babies and the reliance on heart stents and knee surgery.

By presenting medical alternatives, Overkill gives patients invaluable information to help them ask their doctors better questions and to advocate for their own health.

Praise for Do You Believe in Magic?:

'With a fascinating history of hucksters, and a critical chronology of how supplements escaped regulation, Offit cautions consumers not to 'give alternative medicine a free pass because we're fed up with conventional medicine.' His is a bravely unsentimental and dutifully researched guide for consumers to distinguish between quacks and a cure.' STARRED REVIEW