ABSTRACT

The Patient in the Family diagnoses the ways in which the worlds of home and hospital misunderstand each other. The authors explore how medicine, through its new reproductive technologies, is altering the structure of families, how families can participate more fully in medical decision-making, and how to understand the impact on families when medical advances extend life but not vitality.

chapter |29 pages

A Rivalry of Care

chapter |23 pages

Why Families Matter

chapter |28 pages

An Ethics for Families

chapter |36 pages

Medical Decisionmaking

chapter |36 pages

When I'm Sixty-Four

chapter |26 pages

When Medicine Makes Babies

chapter |11 pages

Coda

Medicine, Families, and Other Sources of Identity