An expert’s vision on the disappearance of those who care for our health
I recently had the chance to get my hands on the newly released Icarus Plummeting, written by David Zigmond. centre.
At its core, the book explores a troubling oddity of modern medicine: while we celebrate extraordinary advances in bioengineering and clinical precision, these achievements often arrive at the expense of something far more human.
In a healthcare landscape increasingly dominated by speed, efficiency and algorithms, swift treatments tend to overshadow genuine care. Commodification typically seems more attractive than comfort, and technical jargon often replaces the simple — yet profound — act of understanding. And understanding, is a deeply personal affair.
The cost of this imbalance is considerable and quietly expanding. Yet, there is also hope: a reminder that healthcare can rediscover its focus through personal relationships, continuity of care and a renewed respect for the human experience behind every diagnosis.
So how did we get ourselves into such a pickle? And more importantly, how do we fix it? How much of healthcare lies beyond procedures, checklists and quick fixes? What exists in that vast and rather secret territory between clinical treatment and genuine care?
In Icarus Plummeting, Zigmond presents real stories within healthcare that reveal far more than biomedical facts. They expose something deeper about our shared, yet more and more individual, humanity.
The topic itself is not new, though it feels worryingly relevant today. Zigmond’s perspective, nonetheless, is refreshingly distinctive. Presented as an easily readable book drawn from a frontline practitioner’s notebooks, we get to see traces of how of his daily work evolved over several decades. The result is something between professional reflection and quiet alarm.
The title comes from the Greek myth of Icarus, that cocky guy who flew a bit too close to the sun and drowns, after brushing off his dad’s pretty technically based and well-informed advice, as the creator of the wings. This metaphor really connects with what’s happening in many modern health systems today.
Zigmond shares his thoughts mainly from his time as a doctor in the NHS in the UK, but the issues he points out will resonate with anyone keeping an eye on healthcare across Europe.
The author is a veteran NHS doctor, writer, and healthcare activist. Over decades of work as a psychiatrist, GP and psychotherapist, he has published extensively on the human dimensions of medical care — experience that informs this book’s remarkably timely reflections on the state of modern healthcare.
He reflects on a medical world that once operated very differently. As he writes, there was a time when “personal continuity of care, whenever possible and desired, was regarded as essential. It was often accepted as the most humane, effective, even economical approach in the longer term.”
Today, he argues, reforms have moved the system in another direction entirely.
“Whatever is encountered now requires a rapid and approved technical designation, computer code, management plan, protocol subjection, algorithm submission… All problems are to be treated, managed or referred according to institutional formulae (…) These reforms are designed to expedite procedural treatments, but become heedless and uncomprehending of any more humanly nuanced care.”
With these on-point observations, Zigmond brings to light how in many areas of modern life we have, quite efficiently, reduced ourselves to numbers within a system. And while I’m writing this on a laptop (with considerable appreciation for the conveniences of modern technology), it is difficult to ignore the quiet arrogance in assuming technology alone can solve everything.
Through thoughtful and often revealing storytelling, Zigmond develops this comparison between myth and medicine, sounding at times like a cautious warning as much as a reflective memoir. Interwoven with these observations is his own awareness of ageing — and the uncomfortable thought that, sooner rather than later, he too will need to rely on a system that doesn’t seem to really care.
And, despite the oxymoron of being a part of the same system, he expresses concern about whether it is truly what we require. A lifetime of adapting to procedures and authorities’ directions, the time has now come for him to see it from the other side. And it’s not looking so great for us, normal people.
And now, with the sweeping arrival of artificial intelligence into, well, virtually everything, the question feels even more pressing. Are we gradually handing our health, and our trust, to a system meant to processes and interpret human life purely as data?
In other words: are we becoming Icarus, once again edging a little too close to the sun?
Ultimately, Icarus Plummeting suggests that acknowledging these concerns may actually be part of the solution. Reflecting on what sustains our sense of trust, balance and wellbeing, both individually and collectively, can be quietly restorative. Relationships, empathy, and creativity all play a role in helping us navigate life’s inevitable storms.
But maybe I’m already giving too much away.
Instead, I’ll leave you with an invitation: explore this former doctor’s compelling perspective for yourself, and decide whether our modern healthcare system is soaring confidently forward, or quietly beginning its own Icarian descent.
Little Chilean 