Steve Brouwer Revolutionary Doctors: How Venezuela and Cuba are Changing the World's Conception of Health Care, Monthly Review Press: New York, NY, 2011; 250pp: 9781583672396 Around 1949, a year after the inauguration of the British National Health Service, the American Medical Association retained a public relations firm, Whitaker and Baxter, to attack President Trumans plans for health system reform, which it did with some success. PR firm dredged up an alleged quotation from Lenin, 'Socialised medicine is the keystone to the arch of the Socialist State', which figured in the AMA's campaign then, and has done ever since in the original or in paraphrased form. When President Obama was struggling to pursue his own plans for US health reform, the Patient Care and Affordable Care Act (2010), opposing advertisements appeared on US television. I saw one of these adverts, with its gravelly voiceover stating something to the effect of, 'When the communists want to take over, they first introduce socialised medicine'. Thinking of my native UK, which was shortly to elect a right-wing coalition, I burst out laughing. argument of this book, inspired by the life and work of Che Guevara, turns the AMA's notion on its head. Steve Brouwer frequently quotes or alludes to a celebratory speech made by Che Guevara in August i960 to the Cuban militia. In the speech, Guevara asserted that the practice of medicine cannot be changed progressively, or changed into a revolutionary form, until after a revolution. achievement of a revolution and its safeguarding are two different processes. Once the revolution has occurred, The principle upon which the fight against disease should be based is the creation of a robust body; but not the creation of a robust body by the artistic work of a doctor upon a weak organism; rather, the creation of a robust body with the work of the whole collectivity ... medicine will have to convert itself into a science that serves to prevent disease and orients the public towards carrying out its medical duties. Medicine should only intervene in cases of extreme urgency, to perform surgery or something else which lies outside of the skills of the people.' Guevara pointed to a new kind of doctor, recruited predominantly not from the personally ambitious members of the middle classes, but from the working class and peasantry, and trained with a mission to serve the poor rather than to minister to the rich. However, it is obvious that others must have done the heavy lifting in creating the remarkable Cuban medical training that Brouwer's book enthusiastically describes. Based in an old army barracks in Havana, the centrepiece of La Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina (ELAM) (the initial idea for which Wikipedia attributes to Fidel Castro) is integrated family medicine. Cuban model has been exported by Cuban doctors, but with significant amendments, to Venezuela with the vigorous support of the late President Hugo Chavez. These amendments are significant, since in Venezuela, medical practice and six-year-long medical training are combined: 'The new Cuban-Venezuelan system of medical education, Medicina Integral Communitaria, has taken the concept of apprenticeship and reconfigured it. …