Health Care Ethics

In the quarter century that Victoria Sweet has been a doctor, "health care" has replaced medicine, "providers" (vastly outnumbered by administrators) look at their laptops more than at their patients, and the ruthless pursuit of efficiency has vanquished not only trust and intimacy but also, often, the effectiveness of treatment. Victoria Sweet knows that there is an alternative way, because she has lived and practiced it. In her new book, she reflects with compassion, wit, and profound insight.

An incisive examination of bioethics and American healthcare, and their profound affects on American culture over the last 60 years, from two eminent scholars. An eye-opening look at the inevitable moral choices that come along with tremendous medical progress, Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven but Nobody Wants to Die is a primer for all Americans to talk more honestly about health care.

Americans are in the midst of a world-historic drug binge. Opiates, amphetamines, benzodiazepines, marijuana, antidepressants, antipsychotics—across the board, consumption has shot up in the twenty-first century. At the same time, the United States is home to the largest prison system in the world, justified in part by a now zombified "war" on drugs. How did we get here?

An updated edition of the classic history of schizophrenia in America, which gives voice to generations of patients who suffered through "cures" that only deepened their suffering and impaired their hope of recovery.

In Mercies in Disguise, acclaimed New York Times reporter and best-selling author Gina Kolata tells the story of the Baxleys, an upstanding family in small-town South Carolina. Many of them were doctors, but still, they are struck down by an inscrutable illness. Finally they discover the cause of the disease after a remarkable sequence of providential events. Meanwhile science, progressing for 50 years along a parallel track, handed the Baxleys a question - not a cure but a blood test that would reveal who had the gene for the disease.

In The Rights of Mice, Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower and Going Clear, takes listeners inside the war between science and anti-vivisection raging across the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and its great educational institutions, Harvard and MIT. As animal rights activists attempt to push through city council an ordinance restricting the use of animals in laboratory testing, leaders in the science and medical communities brace for a fight.

In recent years there have been major outbreaks of whooping cough among children in California, mumps in New York, and measles in Ohio's Amish country - despite the fact that these are all vaccine-preventable diseases. Although America is the most medically advanced place in the world, many people disregard modern medicine in favor of using their faith to fight life-threatening illnesses. In 21st-century America, how could this be happening?

In this groundbreaking book, the Queen of Cosmetic Marketing Huyen Truong, founder of the leading patient-generating agency Online Marketing for Doctors, reveals her secrets and step-by-step formulas to becoming the celebrity authority in any cosmetic surgery niche and generating an endless stream of new patients to your practice.

Since it was first published in 1995, The Wounded Storyteller has occupied a unique place in the body of work on illness. Both the collective portrait of a so-called "remission society" of those who suffer from some type of illness or disability and a cogent analysis of their stories within a larger framework of narrative theory, Frank's book has reached a large and diverse following, including the ill, medical professionals, and scholars of literary theory. In this new edition, Frank adds a preface describing the personal and cultural times when the first edition was written.

Med Spa Mayhem is a compelling and must-read book that delves deep into the often unforeseen dangers lurking within the medical spa industry. Dr. Kate Dee brings her extensive expertise and experience to the forefront, offering a critical examination of the growing trend of med spa treatments and the potential risks they can pose. The book serves as both an exposé and a guide for anyone wishing to have med spa treatments.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are all too aware of the urgent health inequalities that plague our world. But these inequalities have always been urgent: modern medicine has a colonial and racist history. Here, in an essential and searingly truthful account, Annabel Sowemimo unravels the colonial roots of modern medicine. Tackling systemic racism, hidden histories and healthcare myths, Sowemimo recounts her own experiences as a doctor, patient and activist.

In this fascinating book, Dr. Dominic M. Etli takes readers on an illuminating journey through the ethical labyrinths of modern medicine, drawing unexpected connections to the ancient wisdom of the samurai. Blending vivid storytelling with philosophical insights, Dr. Etli reveals how timeless concepts like mindfulness, compassion, honor and justice from Zen, Bushido and the Hagakure provide invaluable guidance for today's ethical challenges in healthcare.

Doctors and patients have lost control of American medicine. Generative AI can put the power back in their hands, save millions of lives, and restore the doctor-patient relationship. Welcome to ChatGPT, MD. In this unique collaboration, renowned healthcare leader Dr. Robert Pearl teams up with the artificial intelligence system ChatGPT to examine the transformational power of generative AI in medicine.

In this groundbreaking book, Anita Hannig brings us into the lives of ordinary Americans who go to extraordinary lengths to set the terms of their own death. Faced with a terminal diagnosis and unbearable suffering, they decide to seek medical assistance in dying—a legal option now available to one in five Americans. The Day I Die tackles one of the most urgent social issues of our time: how to restore dignity and meaning to the dying process in the age of high-tech medicine.

David M. Craig traveled across the US to assess its health care access, delivery, and finance. He interviewed religious hospital administrators and interfaith activists, learning how they balance the values of economic efficiency and community accountability. He discovered that health care in the US is not a private good or a public good, but a shared social good. This book argues that as escalating health costs absorb more and more of family income and government budgets, we need to take stock of the full range of health care values.

Drawing on his work as a primary care physician and a behavioral scientist, Michael Stein artfully examines the often conflicting goals of patients and their doctors. In those differences, Stein recognizes that kindness should not be a patient's forbidden or unrealistic expectation. This book leaves us with new knowledge of and insights into what we might hope for, and what might go wrong, or right, in the most intimate clinical moments.

Breakthroughs in genetics present us with a promise and a predicament. The promise is that we will soon be able to treat and prevent a host of debilitating diseases. The predicament is that our newfound genetic knowledge may enable us to manipulate our nature - to enhance our genetic traits and those of our children. Although most people find at least some forms of genetic engineering disquieting, it is not easy to articulate why.

You have seen Robert A. Jensen—you just never knew it. As the owner of the world’s largest disaster management company, he has spent most of his adult life responding to tragedy. From the Oklahoma City bombing, 9/11, and the Bali bombings, to the 2004 South Asian Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the 2010 Haitian Earthquake, and the Grenfell Tower Fire, Jensen has been at the practical level of international incidents, assisting with the recovery of bodies, identifying victims, and repatriating and returning their personal effects to the surviving family members.

Journalist Sarah Dingle was 27 when she learned that her identity was a lie. Over dinner one night, her mother casually mentioned Sarah had been conceived using a sperm donor. The man who’d raised her wasn’t her father; in fact, she had no idea who her father was. Or who she really was. As the shock receded, Sarah began to investigate her own existence. Thus began a 10-year journey - digging through hospital files, chasing leads and taking a DNA test - that finally led to her biological origins.

Where does one go without health insurance, when turned away by hospitals, clinics, and doctors? In The People’s Hospital, physician Ricardo Nuila’s stunning debut, we follow the lives of five uninsured Houstonians as their struggle for survival leads them to a hospital where insurance comes second to genuine care.