David Healy’s 2021 book Shipwreck of the Singular comprehensively challenges modern medicine’s fundamental assumption that expanding medical knowledge enables “progress” and the capacity to promote health. Healy links evidence of falling life expectancy in Western countries to the transformation of healthcare to a service industry, alongside myriad examples of consequent overdiagnosis and iatrogenic harm. Unremittingly pessimistic, Shipwreck paints a bleak picture of healthcare among other societal ills, suggests there is no remedy, and yet invites us to respond.