Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Disease & Health Issues

Susan Sontag once described illness as "the night-side of life." When we or our loved ones fall ill, our world is thrown into darkness and disarray, our routines are interrupted, our deepest beliefs shaken. The modern regime of hyper-logical biomedicine offers little solace when it comes to the effects of ill health on our inner lives. By exploring the role of desire in illness, Eros and Illness offers an alternative: an unconventional, deeply human exploration of what it means to live with, and live through, disease.

When we face down illness, something beyond biomedicine's...

Commodified Bodies examines the social practice of organ transplantation and trafficking and scrutinises the increasingly neoliberal tendencies in the medical system. It analyses phenomena such as the denomination of human body parts as "raw materials" and "commodities," or the arguments used by the proponents for a free market solution. Moreover, it argues that modern medicine is still linked with its religious roots. The commodification of body parts is seen not as an imperialistic act of the market, but as the end of a historical process as the notion of "fetishism" links the...

Medical advances prolong life. They also sometimes prolong suffering. Should we protect life or alleviate suffering? This dilemma formed the foundation for a powerful right-to-die movement and a counterbalancing concern over an emerging culture of death. What are the qualities of a life worth living? Where are the boundaries of tolerable suffering? This book is based on a hugely popular undergraduate course taught at the University of Texas, and is ideal for those interested in the social construction of social worth, social problems, and social movements.

This book is part of a...

In October 2010, nine months after the massive earthquake that devastated Haiti, a second disaster began to unfold soon to become the world's largest cholera epidemic in modern times. In a country that had never before reported cholera, the epidemic mysteriously and simultaneously appeared in river communities of central Haiti, eventually triggering nearly 800,000 cases and 9,000 deaths. What had caused the first cases of cholera in Haiti in recorded history? Who or what was the deadly agent of origin? Why did it explode in the agricultural-rich delta of the Artibonite River? When answers...

This book, by bringing together critical pharmaceutical studies and feminist technoscience studies, explores the way drugs produce sexed and/or gendered identities for those who take - or resist - them, and how feminist technoscience studies can contribute a theoretical lens with which to observe sex and gender in the pharmaceuticalization processes. Topics explored in this diverse collection include the use of hormones to delay puberty onset for trans children; HPV vaccination against cervical cancer in Sweden, the UK, Austria and Colombia; Alzheimer's discourses; and the medication of...

This pioneering collection highlights the historic, groundbreaking, and fascinating work done by doctors, researchers, and healthcare providers to improve the life of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. The relevance of their work impacts all of us regardless of ethnicity because the discoveries made in the search for solutions to health problems, cures to diseases, and improvements to healthcare benefit all who call Hawai?i, as well as the broader Pacific, home.

The majority of the thirty-three contributors are affiliated with the Department of Native Hawaiian Health of the John...

A leading doctor offers answers on the one of the most urgent questions of our time: How do we prevent the next global pandemic?

The 2014 Ebola epidemic in Liberia terrified the world--and revealed how unprepared we are for the next outbreak of an infectious disease. Somewhere in nature, a killer virus is boiling up in the bloodstream of a bird, bat, monkey, or pig, preparing to jump to a human being. This not-yet-detected germ has the potential to wipe out millions of lives over a matter of weeks or months. That risk makes the threat posed by ISIS, a ground war, a massive...

Thoughtful and heartfelt, Goodbye Daddy is a journey of comfort, relief, enlightenment and advocacy all rolled into one woman's insightful experiences with hundreds of families and their caregivers.

Beyond the sorrow, tears, denial, disbelief and pain of losing a loved one, Beverly Dotson, a hospice and palliative care social worker, shares stories her eyes have seen and her heart has felt. Inspired by her family's unpreparedness in losing her own father, the author chose a life-long career of being a voice for families and their loved ones.

Beverly encourages...

This anthology assembles two decades of work initiated by SisterSong Women of Color Health Collective, creators of the human rights-based "reproductive justice" framework to move beyond polarized pro-choice/pro-life debates. Rooted in Black feminism and built on intersecting identities, this revolutionary framework asserts a woman's right to have children, to not have children, and to parent and provide for the children they have.