Exhibit 176

The McKeown thesis: a historical controversy and its enduring influence

Exhibit 176 · Journal article

The McKeown thesis: a historical controversy and its enduring influence

in spite of his conclusions' having been largely discredited by subsequent research

Reviews the reception of Thomas McKeown's thesis about the historical fall in mortality. The abstract states that the thesis has remained influential in spite of McKeown's conclusions having been largely discredited by subsequent research.

Source: James Colgrove, American Journal of Public Health 92(5):725–729
Date: May 2002
Quoted from: Abstract (Am J Public Health 92(5):725-729)
Grade: Peer-reviewed
Document: https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.92.5.725
Accessed: 2026-11-09
Cited by: Findings citing this exhibit

Cited by

Finding MED-9.5: Primary record In Medical Nemesis, Ivan Illich argued that professional medicine damages health at three levels, clinical, social and cultural, and that the cultural damage is the deepest.
Finding MED-10.2: Peer-reviewed Historians moved the credit for the nineteenth-century fall in mortality from diet toward organized public health run by local government. Szreter credited Medical Officers of Health and the sanitary inspectors, housing officers, health visitors, trained midwives and school medical officers they directed, and Colgrove wrote that McKeown's conclusions have been largely discredited by subsequent research.