Books in the Studies in Social Medicine series

Every day, thousands of people quietly face decisions as agonizing as those made famous in the Terri Schiavo case. Throughout that controversy, all kinds of people--politicians, religious leaders, legal and medical experts--made emphatic statements about the facts and offered even more certain opinions about what should be done. To many, courts were either ordering Terri's death by starvation or vindicating her constitutional rights. Both sides called for simple answers. If That Ever Happens to Me details why these simple answers were not right for Terri Schiavo and why they are not right for end-of-life decisions today.Lois Shepherd looks behind labels like "e;starvation,"e; "e;care,"e; or "e;medical treatment"e; to consider what care and feeding really mean, when feeding tubes might be removed, and why disability groups, the faithful, and even the dying themselves often suggest end-of-life solutions that they might later regret. For example, Shepherd cautions against living wills as a pat answer. She provides evidence that demanding letter-perfect documents can actually weaken, rather than bolster, patient choice. The actions taken and decisions made during Terri Schiavo's final years will continue to have repercussions for thousands of others--those nearing death, their families, health-care professionals, attorneys, lawmakers, clergy, media, researchers, and ethicists. If That Ever Happens to Me is an excellent choice for anyone interested in end-of-life law, policy, and ethics--particularly readers seeking a deeper understanding of the issues raised by Terri Schiavo's case.

In a country riven by regional differences, All Health Politics Is Local shatters the notion of a shared national health agenda. It shows that health has always been political and shaped not just by formal policy but also by grassroots community battles.

By comparing institutions in Hawai'i and Louisiana designed to incarcerate individuals with a highly stigmatized disease, this work provides a study of the complex relationship between US imperialism and public health policy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

In this collection of essays, Lawrence O. Gostin, an internationally recognized scholar of AIDS law and policy, confronts the most pressing and controversial issues surrounding AIDS in America and around the world. He shows how HIV/AIDS affects the entire population - infected and uninfected - by influencing social norms, the economy, and the US's role as a world leader.

Over the last twenty years, type 2 diabetes skyrocketed to the forefront of global public health concern. In this book, Mari Armstrong-Hough examines the rise and response to the disease in two societies: the United States and Japan. Both societies have faced rising rates of diabetes, but their social and biomedical responses to its ascendance have diverged.

One of medicine's most remarkable therapeutic triumphs was the discovery of insulin in 1921. But the author demonstrates that the transformation of the disease from fatal condition into a chronic illness is tinged with irony and one which illuminates the human consequences of medical intervention.

Is there a place for complementary and alternative therapies in modern health care? This book discusses the need for establishing rules and standards to facilitate appropriate integration of conventional and complementary and alternative medical CAM therapies.