Books in the Health, Technology and Society series

Based on detailed studies of the actual use of genetic testing in context, this book looks at the ethical and political questions raised by the expanding role of genetic information in society. In contrast to the established perspective which focuses on individual freedom, the authors emphasize a pragmatic approach focussed on societal learning.

In this unique and timely book, Nelly Oudshoorn argues that any discourse or policy assuming a passive role for people living with these implants silences the fact that keeping cyborg bodies alive involves their active engagement.

This book provides a solid basis to understand two centuries of bodily measurement practices and their scientific and political scope throughout the Western world.

This is a book on how home is made when care enters the lives of people as they grow old at home or in 'homely' institutions.

Built on presuppositions about failsafe system-design, risk elimination, and human fallibility, the patient safety programme introduces new problems and safety threats in clinical practice by devaluing practical forms of reasoning and the trained safety dispositions of clinicians.

This volume breaks new ground by asking how our understandings of gender can be informed by exploring the socio-technical relations of ICTs in health care, and how far an appreciation of the ways in which gender works can inform and improve our understanding of how ICTs are being developed, implemented, and used in health care contexts.

This book explores international biomedical research and development on the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. Subsequent contributions explore the values at stake in current practices of dealing with Alzheimer's disease and dementia, both within and outside the biomedical domain.

The first detailed and comprehensive analysis of the implications of new health technologies for society, the delivery of health care, and the very meaning of health itself. It is based on new, critical social science research integrated according to core themes, making it accessible and engaging to both students and researchers.

Welcome or not, most citizens in Western countries are unable to go through a day without receiving a dose of health information. This book examines the ways in which ordinary people locate and digest the amount of health information available today, focusing on the unexplored 'middle' place of human and technical mediators.

Regenerative medicine, encompassing stem cells and tissue engineering, has attracted huge interest within commercial, clinical and government circles, and promises to change medicine itself. This book provides the first detailed examination and critical assessment of the field to be made by social science.

The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit is a site where hi-tech medicine and vulnerable human beings come into close contact. Focusing on a number of medical and ethical challenges encountered by staff and parents, this book provides a new perspective on the complexity of these treatments and the inventiveness of those involved.

From bandage to the bioreactor, this book looks at five different device technologies from inception to healthcare practice, drawing on medical sociology, science and technology studies and political science. It examines 'evidence', regulation and governance processes, and diverse stakeholders in innovating the technologies that shape health care.

Through an examination of his later personal notebooks, this study explores the reciprocal effects that Samuel Taylor Coleridge's scientific explorations, philosophical convictions, theological beliefs, and states of health exerted upon his perceptions of human Body/Soul relations, both in life and after death.

The first detailed and comprehensive analysis of the implications of new health technologies for society, the delivery of health care, and the very meaning of health itself. It is based on new, critical social science research integrated according to core themes, making it accessible and engaging to both students and researchers.

This volume breaks new ground by asking how our understandings of gender can be informed by exploring the socio-technical relations of ICTs in health care, and how far an appreciation of the ways in which gender works can inform and improve our understanding of how ICTs are being developed, implemented, and used in health care contexts.

This is the first book to examine how effectively American and supranational EU governments have regulated innovative pharmaceuticals during the last 30 years regarding public health. It explains why pharmaceutical regulation has been misdirected by commercial interests and misconceived ideologies.

Shifting the sociological focus away from CAM as a stable entity that elicits perceptions and experiences, chapters explore the forms that CAM takes in different settings, how global social transformations elicit varieties of CAM, and how CAM philosophies and practices are co-produced in the context of social change.

Drawing on a wide range of interviews and primary and secondary sources, this book investigates the dynamic interactions between national regulatory formation and the global biopolitics of regenerative medicine and human embryonic stem cell science.

Welcome or not, most citizens in Western countries are unable to go through a day without receiving a dose of health information. This book examines the ways in which ordinary people locate and digest the amount of health information available today, focusing on the unexplored 'middle' place of human and technical mediators.

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This book explore assumptions underpinning contemporary health policy discourses that emphasize personal responsibility for health, consider how they attach to changing information technologies, and discuss their influence on emerging forms of health 'work'.

This book explores issues raised by past and present practices of animal enhancement in terms of their means and their goals, clarifies conceptual issues and identifies lessons that can be learned about enhancement practices, as they concern both animals and humans.

Human enhancement has become a major concern in debates about the future of contemporary societies. This interdisciplinary book is devoted to clarifying the underlying ambiguities of these debates, and to proposing novel ways of exploring what human enhancement means and understanding what practices, goals and justifications it entails.

With its focus on the offshore randomized control trials of a Pre-Exposure Prophylactic pill (PrEP) for preventing HIV infection, the volume develops a sustained analysis of the complex, virtual and topological dimensions of the expectations, ethics and evidence that surround the innovation of PrEP.

Nelly Oudshoorn shows how telecare technologies participate in redefining the responsibilities and identities of patients and healthcare professionals, introducing a new category of healthcare workers, and changing the kinds of care and spaces where healthcare is situated.

This book explore assumptions underpinning contemporary health policy discourses that emphasize personal responsibility for health, consider how they attach to changing information technologies, and discuss their influence on emerging forms of health 'work'.

This book draws on medical sociology and science and technology studies to develop a novel conceptual framework for understanding innovation processes, using the case study of deep brain stimulation in paediatric neurology.

Regenerative medicine, encompassing stem cells and tissue engineering, has attracted huge interest within commercial, clinical and government circles, and promises to change medicine itself. This book provides the first detailed examination and critical assessment of the field to be made by social science.

Shifting the sociological focus away from CAM as a stable entity that elicits perceptions and experiences, chapters explore the forms that CAM takes in different settings, how global social transformations elicit varieties of CAM, and how CAM philosophies and practices are co-produced in the context of social change.