American bioethics was born out of a desire to be relevant. The philosopher Daniel Callahan has said that he and his colleagues founded the Hastings Center–the premier bioethics think tank–in 1969 because they wanted to give philosophy “some social bite, some relevance.” Whether bioethics has achieved its goal is the urgent question at the core of this useful book, co-authored by Renée C. Fox, a highly distinguished sociologist, and Judith P. Swazey, a respected historian of medicine. Between them, Fox and Swazey have spent many decades as participant observers in the house of medicine. Their intensive involvement with physicians, theologians, and philosophers has given them ringside seats to the development of modern bioethics. Through enjoyable interviews with major figures in the field and a rich trove of personal observations, the book perceptively, if densely, chronicles the growth of bioethics as a profession. (AEI)

We all complain about our ambivalence with modern technology. I’ve think I’ve given myself acquired attention deficit disorder by staying connected all the time. But it’s hard to scale back without giving up many of my relationships (not to mention my job). “You can easily find yourself sucked into the vortex of spending hours a day starting at a computer screen,” says Jonathan Mostow, the director of the film Surrogates, which opens tomorrow. (Scientific American Blog)

Put succinctly, what Alva Noë is offering in Out of Our Heads is nothing short of a paradigm shift, complete with an incisive criticism of the status quo of neurosciences and a suggestion for an alternative model. The scientific study of consciousness in general, and what Noë calls the establishment neuroscience in particular claims to have broken free from its philosophical foundations. Although Noë acknowledges that the problem of consciousness is a scientific problem, one for which a scientific answer should be expected, he challenges the scientific community’s contention that consciousness no longer remains a philosophical problem. (Metapsychology)

Denise Mina is ABD – all but the dissertation. Her acclaimed psychological thrillers grew out of her sidelined dissertation on the ascription of mental illness to women in the criminal justice system: according to her Web site, she misspent her grant money and wrote a novel instead. This novel, Garnethill (1998), grew into a trilogy featuring Maureen O’Donnell as a woman with a history of trauma and mental illness, interacting with the criminal justice system as witness, suspect, critic, and citizen. (Bioethics Forum)

JAMA (Volume 302, Number 6, August 12, 2009) is now available by subscription only.

Articles Include:

• “Unfinished Business in Tobacco Control” by Jonathan M. Samet and Heather Wipfli, 681-682.
• “Structural Interventions for Addressing Chronic Health Problems” by Mitchell H. Katz, 683-685.
• “Hospital Mortality and Leapfrog Hospital Survey Results”by Peter B. Angood and Helen Burstin, 625-626.
• “Funding Transparency” by Mike Mitka, 619.
• “Veteran Care Mishandled” by Mike Mitka, 619.
• “Rescinding Coverage” by Mike Mitka, 619.

Book and Media Reviews Include:

• “Populations, Public Health, and the Law” by Edward P. Richards, 691-692.
• “The Good Doctors: The Medical Committee for Human Rights and the Struggle for Social Justice in Health Care” by Lynn C. Smitherman, 692-693.
• “A Life Worth Living: A Doctor’s Reflections on Illness in a High-Tech Era” by Dennis Rosen, 693=695.
• “The Future of Bioethics” by Deborah Bowman, 695.

JAMA (Volume 302, Number 5, August 5, 2009) is now available by subscription only.

Articles Include:

• “Elder Self-neglect and Abuse and Mortality Risk in a Community-Dwelling Population” by XinQi Dong, Melissa Simon, Carlos Mendes de Leon, Terry Fulmer, Todd Beck, Liesi Hebert, Carmel Dyer, Gregory Paveza, and Denis Evans, 517-526.
• “Association of Torture and Other Potentially Traumatic Events With Mental Health Outcomes Among Populations Exposed to Mass Conflict and Displacement: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis” by Zachary Steel, Tien Chey, Derrick Silove, Claire Marnane, Richard A. Bryant, and Mark van Ommeren, 537-549.
• “Enhancing Hospital Surge Capacity for Mass Casualty Events” by Kobi Peleg and Arthur L. Kellermann, 565-567.
• “Elder Self-neglect: Medical Emergency or Marker of Extreme Vulnerability?” by Thomas M. Gill, 570-571.
• “AAAS: Use Science to Boost Human Rights” by Bridget M. Kuehn, 480-481.

Book and Media Reviews Include:

• “Children and Violence: The World of the Defenseless” by Carl C. Bell, 573-574.
• “Public Health Aspects of HIV/AIDS in Low and Middle Income Countries: Epidemiology, Prevention, and Care” by R. Scott McClelland, 574-575.
• “A Sadly Troubled History: The Meanings of Suicide in the Modern Age” by Antolin C. Trinidad, 575-576.
• “Current Therapy in Pain” by Devi E. Nampiaparampil

Sociology of Health & Illness (Volume 31, Issue 5, July 2009) is now available by subscription only.

Articles Include:

• “Medicine and management in a comparative perspective: the case of Denmark and England” by Ian Kirkpatrick, Peter Kragh Jespersen, Mike Dent, and Indareth Neogy, 642-658.
• “Everyday health and the internet: a mediated health perspective on health information seeking” by Joëlle Kivits, 673-687.
• “Fear, fascination and the sperm donor as ‘abjection’ in interviews with heterosexual recipients of donor insemination” by Jennifer Burr, 705-718.
• “Derivative benefits: exploring the body through complementary and alternative medicine” by Charlotte Baarts and Inge Kryger Pedersen, 719-733.
• “Functions of health fatalism: fatalistic talk as face saving, uncertainty management, stress relief and sense making” by Bethany Keeley, Lanelle Wright, and Celeste M. Condit, 734-747.

Book Reviews Include:

• “When Doctors Become Patients” by Caitlin E. Slodden, 780-781.
• “Medical technology into healthcare and society. A sociology of devices, innovation and governance” by Pascale Lehoux, 781-783.
• “Mediating Health Information” by Freddie Attenborough, 783-784.
• “Suicide. The hidden side of modernity” by Stephen Platt, 784-785,

This book operates at the intersection of three debates: bioethics; biomedicine; and disability/Deaf studies. It is an excellent introduction for bioethicists and others who are unfamiliar with the challenge posed by disability studies. Scully challenges thinkers to take bodies seriously, and different bodies in particular, by which she encompasses both gender and disability: “the claim of this book is that impaired or disabled embodiment is worth closer attention” (9). Assumptions about normality are closely scrutinized. At the same time, she also challenges disability studies to take bioethics seriously, giving an object lesson in how to engage with challenging authors, rather than simply rejecting them. (Metapsychology)

For those interested in medical research ethics, this is an important book. With so much of the day-to-day discussions in bioethics focused on the wording of consent forms and other details, this volume raises some of the most profound issues in the history of medical research. It also raises some difficult issues in today’s medical research. [Premium (Psychiatric Services)]

IT is a rare treat when parting with money for a mainstream movie buys real food for thought. But Hollywood hoopla and high-profile castings hide the kernel of real, human issues in My Sister’s Keeper. The movie, which opened in cinemas across the nation this week, prompts a discussion that ethicists say society must have continually if it is to keep its laws related to embryo selection thoughtful and its moral barometer calibrated. (Courier-Mail)

“Who was the most miserable kid in your seventh grade class?” asks Abigail Zuger, M.D., in her Books column in this week’s Science Times. “Was it the tiny boy who could still fit into his fourth-grade jeans? Was it the six-foot girl, a hunched-over stork in flat shoes and horizontal stripes?” (New York Times)

It is common knowledge that, in nearly all developed countries, the number of persons older than 65 years is increasing, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of the general population. By some estimates, the number of those older than 65 years will double in the United States in the next 2 decades. While there have always been attempts to prolong longevity, there is now an increased interest—and ability—to improve the quality of those added years. [Premium (JAMA)]

Sociology of Health & Illness (Volume 31, Issue 1, January 2009) is now available by subscription only.

Articles Include:

• “Violence, dignity and HIV vulnerability: street sex work in Serbia” by Milena Simić and Tim Rhodes, 1-16.
• “AIDS stigma in health services in the Eastern Caribbean” by Scott Edward Rutledge, Neil Abell, Jacqueline Padmore, and Theresa J. McCann, 17-34.
• “Are you sitting comfortably? The political economy of the body” by Peter Wilkin, 35-50.
• “Shifting blame/selling health: corporate social responsibility in the age of obesity” by Clare Herrick, 51-65.
• “Becoming a ‘real’ smoker: cultural capital in young women’s accounts of smoking and other substance use ” by Rebecca J. Haines, Blake D. Poland, and Joy L. Johnson, 66-80.
• “Choosing not to choose: reproductive responses of parents of children with genetic conditions or impairments” by Susan E. Kelly, 81-97.
• “How work reconfigures an ‘unwanted’ pregnancy into ‘the right tool for the job’ in stem cell research” by Naomi Pfeffer, 98-111.
• “From housing wealth to well-being?” by Beverley A. Searle, Susan J. Smith, and Nicole Cook, 112-127.
• “Time, self and the medication day: a closer look at the everyday work of ‘adherence’” by Liza McCoy, 128-146.

Book Reviews Include:

• “The Medicalization of Society: On the transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders - by Conrad, P.” by Mike Bury, 147-148.
• “Health, Risk and Vulnerability Edited by Petersen, A. and Wilkinson, I.” by Ian Rees Jones, 148-149.
• “Researching Trust and Health - by Brownlie, J., Greene, A. and Howson, A.” by Patrick Brown, 149-151.
• “Essays on Professions, Ashgate Classics in Sociology - by Dingwall, R.” by Andy Alaszewski, 151-152.
• “The Sleep of Others and the Transformations of Sleep Research - by Kroker, K.” by Simon J. Williams, 152-153.
• “Critical Bodies. Representations, Identities and Practices of Weight and Body Management’ - by Riley, S., Burns, M., Frith, H., Wiggins, S. and Marcula, P.” by Liz Frost, 153-154.

The notions of biomedical enhancement and our possible posthuman future are very much, so to speak, topics du jour in the bioethical literature. Over the past few years a number of books have appeared that address the ethical issues that surround our using medical technology not simply to treat disorders, but to increase our capacities beyond their normal range, perhaps even to the point where we no longer can be counted as human. These include landmark works by John Harris (Enhancing Evolution) and Michael Sandel (The Case Against Perfection), along with other excellent and thought-provoking works by the likes of Jürgen Habermas and Francis Fukuyama, as well as a first-rate edited collection (Human Enhancement) produced by Julian Savulescu and Nick Bostrom. (Metapsychology)

Before we can understand what the “beyond” of a good death might mean, it is necessary to examine the meaning the phrase “a good death”. Edwin Sheidman, professor emeritus of Thanatology at UCLA and founder of the American Association of Suicidology argues that there are ten features of a good death. Metapsychology

Rita Charon describes narrative medicine as a clinical practice, “defined as medicine practiced with the narrative competence to recognize, absorb, interpret, and be moved by the stories of illness.” The idea of narrative medicine is a fine one: emphasize the role of narrative (and thus meanings, life histories, and emotions) in medicine, and especially physician-patient interactions. It’s a fundamentally humanist approach, with the goal of treating the whole person rather than the disease. (Metapsychology)

For many liberals, it is a truism that the recently departed conservative administration used politics to undermine science. But in Imagining the Future: Science and American Democracy, Yuval Levin suggests that the real problem is in a sense the other way around. Democrats, he argues, are the party of science, and “science threatens sometimes to overwhelm our institutions of self-government [2].” In the lesser, partisan thread of this book, one can almost hear Levin’s worse angels whispering in his ear: “Those Democrats don’t just lack seriousness and proper understanding. They don’t just have shallow souls. They’re democracy’s unwitting enemies.”Science Progress

In Babies by Design, Ronald M. Green has produced a helpful, interesting, and above all clear introduction to the ethical issues surrounding the use of new and prospective genetic technologies. His focus is primarily, though despite his title not exclusively, on the application that such technologies have to the avoidance of genetic disorder in future children, as well as to the more controversial issue of the production of children with enhanced capabilities. The book is ideal for students new to the field, and for the intelligent general reader. Those already familiar with the ethical problems it covers will find nothing especially new in it, though they may derive considerable benefit from Green’s careful accounts of the science of human genetic engineering. Certainly, the work is commendably free of jargon, assumes no prior knowledge of philosophy in general or bioethics in particular, and is written in a remarkably lucid and engaging style.Metapsychology

The ethical (and legal) standard for informed consent is the complete disclosure of material information. But what is “material” to a decision to undergo surgery? This question is explored in Informed Consent and Clinician Accountability: The Ethics of Report Cards on Surgeon Performance. For surgeons, the take-home message is that it is no longer ethically acceptable to quote textbook morbidity and mortality data to patients prior to elective surgery. Rather, Clarke and Oakley argue that surgeons are ethically obligated to disclose their personal outcomes for a particular operation. [Premium (JAMA)]

The options for readers interested in bioethics have expanded exponentially. Choices range from undergraduate texts to sophisticated monographs with specialty-specific titles, anthologies, and examination-focused, revisionist works. The Cambridge Textbook of Bioethics achieves something significant—it provides an original and valuable addition to an already crowded marketplace. (JAMA)

JAMA (Volume 300, Number 16, October 22 2008) is now available by subscription only.

Articles Include:

• “Uninsured Children and Adolescents With Insured Parents” by Jennifer E. DeVoe, Carrie Tillotson, and Lorraine S. Wallace, 1904-1913
• “Uninsured Adults Presenting to US Emergency Departments: Assumptions vs Data” by Manya F. Newton, Carla C. Keirns, Rebecca Cunningham, Rodney A. Hayward and Rachel Stanley, 1914-1924
• “Making Access to Quality and Affordable Health Care a Reality for Every American” by Senator John S. McCain, 1925-1926
• “Affordable Health Care for All Americans: The Obama-Biden Plan” by Senator Barack Obama, 1927-1928
• “A New Federal-State Partnership in Health Care: Real Power for States” by Ezekiel Emanuel and Ron Wyden, 1931-1934
• “Comparison of the US and Canadian Health Care Systems: A Tale of 2 Mount Sinai’s” by Joseph S. Ross and Allan S. Detsky, 1934-1936
• “Upper Income Limit for SCHIP and Forgone Care Among Uninsured US Children” by Laura P. Shone, Jonathan D. Klein, Aaron K. Blumkin and Peter G. Szilagyi, 1882-1884
• “Health Insurance Costs Remain a Burden for Employers and Working Families” by Mike Mitka, 1963-1868

Book and Media Reviews Include:

• “Low Income, Social Growth, and Good Health: A History of Twelve Countries” by William B. Ventres, 1943-1944
• “Health Disparities in the United States: Social Class, Race, Ethnicity, and Health” by Olanrewaju O. Omojokun and Bryan R. Fine, 1944-1945
• “Without Your Consent: The Hijacking of American Health Care” by Peter S. Hussey and Marisa E. Adelson, 1945-1946