Ordinary medicine : extraordinary treatments, longer lives, and where to draw the line
(Book)
Author
Published
Durham ; Duke University Press, 2015.
Format
Book
Physical Desc
xiii, 314 pages ; 23 cm.
Status
Main Library - Adult
362.10973 Kau
1 available
362.10973 Kau
1 available
Description
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Copies
Location | Call Number | Status |
---|---|---|
Main Library - Adult | 362.10973 Kau | On Shelf |
More Details
Published
Durham ; Duke University Press, 2015.
Language
English
UPC
99963217506
Notes
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 285-305) and index.
Description
Most of us want and expect medicine's miracles to extend our lives. In today's aging society, however, the line between life-giving therapies and too much treatment is hard to see -- it's being obscured by a perfect storm created by the pharmaceutical and biomedical industries, along with insurance companies. In Ordinary Medicine, Sharon R. Kaufman investigates what drives that storm's "more is better" approach to medicine: a nearly invisible chain of social, economic, and bureaucratic forces that has made once-extraordinary treatments seem ordinary, necessary, and desirable. Since 2002, Kaufman has listened to hundreds of older patients, their physicians, and family members express their hopes, fears, and reasoning as they faced the line between enough and too much intervention. Their stories anchor Ordinary Medicine. Today's medicine, Kaufman contends, shapes nearly every American's experience of growing older, and ultimately medicine is undermining its own ability to function as a social good.
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