"In short, engaging scenarios, Dr. Appel takes on hot-button issues that many of us will confront: genetic screening, sexuality, privacy, doctor-patient confidentiality. He unpacks each hypothetical with a brief reflection drawing from science, philosophy, and history, explaining how others have approached these controversies in real-world cases. Who Says You're Dead? is designed to defy easy answers and to stimulate thought and even debate among...

An argument against the “lifeboat ethic” of contemporary bioethics that views medicine as a commodity rather than a tradition of care and caring.

Bioethics emerged in the 1960s from a conviction that physicians and researchers needed the guidance of philosophers in handling the issues raised by technological advances in medicine. It blossomed as a response to the perceived doctor-knows-best paternalism of the traditional medical

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"The story of the gene begins in earnest in an obscure Augustinian abbey in Moravia in 1856 where Gregor Mendel, a monk working with pea plants, stumbles on the idea of a "unit of heredity." It intersects with Darwin's theory of evolution, and collides with the horrors of Nazi eugenics in the 1940s. The gene transforms postwar biology. It invades discourses concerning race and identity and provides startling answers to some of the most potent questions...

"Shocking cases of abusive medical research and the whistleblowers who spoke out against them, sometimes at the expense of their careers. The Occasional Human Sacrifice is an intellectual inquiry into the moral struggle that whistleblowers face, and why it is not the kind of struggle that most people imagine. Carl Elliott is a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota who was trained in medicine as well as philosophy. For many years he fought for...

Tired of the politics at an urban hospital, Dr. Lukas Bower decides to practice medicine in a small town but finds politics in abundance there as well as he strives to do what is best for his patients. "Dr. Lukas Bower believes in God, the Hippocratic Oath and doing the right thing. Lukas won't prescribe drugs to an addict just because he's the son of a hospital board member. Or let an obese man die because he doesn't have insurance. Lukas didn't...

Kramer examines the implications of taking drugs to alter personality rather than effect illness, focusing on Prozac, a popular antidepressant.

"An empowering, soul-baring personal account and guide from a two-time cancer survivor and healthcare disrupter that shows anyone how to deal with a frightening medical diagnosis in America today, providing the knowledge necessary to take ownership of personal wellbeing and maximize the chances for survival. More than twenty-five years ago, Kathryn Giusti was diagnosed with multiple myeloma at age thirty-seven and given three years to live. With...

The story of two doctors, a father and son, who practiced in very different times and the evolution of the ethics that profoundly influence health care
 
As a practicing physician and longtime member of his hospital’s ethics committee, Dr. Barron Lerner thought he had heard it all. But in the mid-1990s, his father, an infectious diseases physician, told him a stunning story: he had physically placed his body...

"A critical care doctor's riveting stories about what it means to be saved by modern medicine"--Jacket flap. Modern medicine is a world that glimmers with new technology and cutting-edge research. As a critical care doctor treating people at their sickest, Lamas is fascinated by a different story: what comes after for those whose lives are extended by days, months, or years as a result of our treatments and technologies? Here she explores the complex...

This women's history classic brilliantly exposed the constraints imposed on women in the name of science and exposes the myths used to control them. Since the the nineteenth century, professionals have been invoking scientific expertise to prescribe what women should do for their own good. Among the experts’ diagnoses and remedies: menstruation was an illness requiring seclusion; pregnancy, a disabling condition; and higher education, a threat...