Book picks similar to
Willing and Unable: Doctors' Constraints in Abortion Care by Lori R. Freedman
abortion
medicine
feminism
nonfiction
Letters from the Pit: Stories of a Physician's Odyssey in Emergency Medicine
Patrick Crocker - 2019
Every day the staff of emergency rooms throughout the world are saving lives - 24/7/365. Dr. Patrick Crocker provides us an intimate glimpse into the growing mind of an emergency physician, from residency to retirement. Told in a unique first-person stream of consciousness style, you are right in the middle of the action, looking over the doctor's shoulder while he works. In this compilation of notable, frightening, funny, sad, and poignant cases, you'll see Dr. Crocker's struggles to Do No Harm in the most challenging of situations. Through these stories, you'll see him find the delicate balance between help and harm, empathy and self-preservatio
Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement
Sarah Erdreich - 2013
At the start of his second term, it is time for Barack Obama, forty years after Roe v. Wade, to finally help lead us to demystify abortion. One-third of all American women will have an abortion by the time they are 45, and most of those women are already mothers. Yet, the topic remains taboo. In this provocative book on the heels of the Planned Parenthood controversy, Sarah Erdreich presents the antidote to the usual abortion debates.Inextricably connected to issues of autonomy, privacy, and sexuality, the abortion debate remains home base for the culture wars in America. Yet, there is more common ground than meets the eye in favor of choice. Generation Roe delves into phenomena such as "abortion-recovery counseling," "crisis pregnancy centers," and the infamous anti-choice "black children are an endangered species" billboards. It tells the stories of those who risk their lives to pursue careers in this stigmatized field. And it outlines the outrageous legislative battles that are being waged against abortion rights all over the country. With an inspiring spirit and a forward-looking approach, Erdreich holds abortion up, unabashedly, as a moral and fundamental human right.
The Better Half: On the Genetic Superiority of Women
Sharon Moalem - 2020
O. Wilson Literary Science Writing AwardAn award-winning physician and scientist makes the game-changing case that genetic females are stronger than males at every stage of lifeHere are some facts: Women live longer than men. They have stronger immune systems. They're better at fighting cancer and surviving famine, and even see the world in a wider variety of colors. They are simply stronger than men at every stage of life. Why is this? And why are we taught the opposite?To find out, Dr. Sharon Moalem drew on his own medical experiences - treating premature babies in the neonatal intensive care unit; recruiting the elderly for neurogenetic studies; tending to HIV-positive orphans in Thailand - and tried to understand why in every instance men were consistently less likely to thrive. The answer, he discovered, lies in our genetics: two X chromosomes offer a powerful survival advantage.With clear, captivating prose that weaves together eye-opening research, case studies, diverse examples ranging from the behavior of honeybees to American pioneers, as well as experiences from his personal life and his own patients, Moalem explains why genetic females triumph over males when it comes to resiliency, intellect, stamina, immunity and much more. He also calls for a reconsideration of our male-centric, one-size-fits-all view of medical studies and even how we prescribe medications - a view that still sees women through the lens of men.Revolutionary and yet utterly convincing, The Better Half will make you see humanity and the survival of our species anew.
A Map of the Child: A Pediatrician's Tour of the Body
Darshak Sanghavi - 2003
. . Sanghavi is a vivid and effortless teller of human tales and quite evidently a special doctor, too." —Atul Gawande, author of ComplicationsIn this compelling book, Dr. Darshak Sanghavi takes the reader on a dramatic tour of a child's eight vital organs, beginning with the lungs and proceeding through the heart, blood, bones, brain, skin, gonads, and gut.Along the way, we meet children and families in extraordinary circumstances—a premature baby named Adam Flax who was born with undeveloped lungs, a teenage boy with a positive pregnancy test, and a young girl who keeps losing weight despite her voracious appetite. In a deeply personal narrative, Sanghavi provides a richly detailed—and humanized—portrait of how the pediatric body functions in both sickness and health.
The Politics of Breastfeeding: When Breasts Are Bad for Business
Gabrielle Palmer - 1988
In her powerful book Gabrielle Palmer describes how big business uses subtle techniques to pressure parents to use alternatives to breastmilk. The infant feeding product companies’ thirst for profit systematically undermines mothers’ confidence in their ability to breastfeed their babies. An essential and inspirational eye-opener, The Politics of Breastfeeding challenges our complacency about how we feed our children and radically reappraises a subject which concerns not only mothers, but everyone: man or woman, parent or childless, old or young.3rd fully revised and updated edition.
Waking Up Blind Lawsuits Over Eye Surgery
Tom Harbin - 2009
The shocking story of blinded eyes, and the medical school that allowed it.
Save Your Gallbladder and what to do if you've already lost it
Sandra Cabot - 2013
A book to help everyone affected by disease of the gallbladder or bile ducts.If you are having gallbladder problems, whether you have already lost it or not, this book tells you what to do. Gallbladder disease can be painful and frightening, which explains why many people are rushed off to surgery to have their gallbladder removed. Is this the best thing to do? Are we panicking? These decisions are complex and serious and thus it takes an expert in liver and gallbladder problems like Dr Sandra Cabot to help you make sense of it.Your gallbladder is precious and supports optimal digestion and absorption of nutrients and some people have complications after surgery, some people still have the same pain after surgery some people never feel well after having their gallbladder removed.Thankfully, Dr Cabot has written this book to help you and your doctor make the best decisions.In most cases there are safe natural alternatives that can help you to save your gallbladder, dissolve stones and restore healthy gallbladder and liver function.In this book you will find the following information:Types of gallbladder disorders covered in this bookRisk factors for gallbladder diseaseSymptoms of gallbladder dysfunctionSymptoms of a gallbladder attackThe natural treatment of gallstonesThe seven essential strategies for treating gallbladder disease1. Keep the bile fluid and keep it moving - ie. prevent bile stasis and bile sludge2. The best foods and herbs for the gallbladderRaw vegetable juice for the gallbladderGreen goodness soup for the gallbladderRaw beetroot salad for the gallbladder3. Keep your bowel moving and avoid constipation4. Take the right nutrients necessary for healthy bile5. Reduce cholesterol6. Avoid problem foods and fix your digestionCoeliac disease and gallstonesFood allergies and gallstones7. Eat the right fatsFirst aid remedies for easing the pain of a gallbladder attackTo flush or not to flush: when is it safe and appropriate to do a gallbladder flush?Safe and effective gallbladder flushGallbladder remedies cheat sheetsummary of the most important pointsBasic structure and function of the gallbladderWhat goes wrong - why do gallstones form?Thick and stagnant bile - a recipe for stone formationDiagnosis of gallbladder diseaseBlood testsWhat if it’s not your gallbladder after all?The conventional medical treatment of gallstonesNon-surgical medical treatments for gallstonesSometimes it has to go!Signs and symptoms that indicate your gallbladder should come outOther conditions affecting the gallbladder or bile ducts.95Gallbladder conditions during pregnancyHow to live well without a gallbladderStrategies for maintaining good health without a gallbladderRecipes and Food IdeasSuper Quick Shopping Listwww.sandracabot.comwww.liverdoctor.comwww.cabothealth.com.au
Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and Women
Renee Engeln - 2017
They don’t want to be Barbie dolls but, like generations of women before them, are told they must look like them. They’re angry about the media’s treatment of women but hungrily consume the very outlets that belittle them. They mock modern culture’s absurd beauty ideal and make videos exposing Photoshopping tricks, but feel pressured to emulate the same images they criticize by posing with a "skinny arm." They understand that what they see isn’t real but still download apps to airbrush their selfies. Yet these same young women are fierce fighters for the issues they care about. They are ready to fight back against their beauty-sick culture and create a different world for themselves, but they need a way forward.In Beauty Sick, Dr. Renee Engeln, whose TEDx talk on beauty sickness has received more than 250,000 views, reveals the shocking consequences of our obsession with girls’ appearance on their emotional and physical health and their wallets and ambitions, including depression, eating disorders, disruptions in cognitive processing, and lost money and time. Combining scientific studies with the voices of real women of all ages, she makes clear that to truly fulfill their potential, we must break free from cultural forces that feed destructive desires, attitudes, and words—from fat-shaming to denigrating commentary about other women. She provides inspiration and workable solutions to help girls and women overcome negative attitudes and embrace their whole selves, to transform their lives, claim the futures they deserve, and, ultimately, change their world.Duration: 11 hr., 45 min., 39 sec.
Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America
Beth Macy - 2018
From distressed small communities in Central Appalachia to wealthy suburbs; from disparate cities to once-idyllic farm towns; it's a heartbreaking trajectory that illustrates how this national crisis has persisted for so long and become so firmly entrenched. Beginning with a single dealer who lands in a small Virginia town and sets about turning high school football stars into heroin overdose statistics, Macy endeavors to answer a grieving mother's question-why her only son died-and comes away with a harrowing story of greed and need. From the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, Macy parses how America embraced a medical culture where overtreatment with painkillers became the norm. In some of the same distressed communities featured in her bestselling book Factory Man, the unemployed use painkillers both to numb the pain of joblessness and pay their bills, while privileged teens trade pills in cul-de-sacs, and even high school standouts fall prey to prostitution, jail, and death.Through unsparing, yet deeply human portraits of the families and first responders struggling to ameliorate this epidemic, each facet of the crisis comes into focus. In these politically fragmented times, Beth Macy shows, astonishingly, that the only thing that unites Americans across geographic and class lines is opioid drug abuse. But in a country unable to provide basic healthcare for all, Macy still finds reason to hope-and signs of the spirit and tenacity necessary in those facing addiction to build a better future for themselves and their families.
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
Harriet A. Washington - 2007
Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge—a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It reveals how blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of blacks, and the view that they were biologically inferior, oversexed, and unfit for adult responsibilities. Shocking new details about the government’s notorious Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less-well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, prisons, and private institutions.The product of years of prodigious research into medical journals and experimental reports long undisturbed, Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit. At last, it provides the fullest possible context for comprehending the behavioral fallout that has caused black Americans to view researchers—and indeed the whole medical establishment—with such deep distrust. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read Medical Apartheid, a masterful book that will stir up both controversy and long-needed debate.
The Empathy Exams
Leslie Jamison - 2014
She draws from her own experiences of illness and bodily injury to engage in an exploration that extends far beyond her life, spanning wide-ranging territory—from poverty tourism to phantom diseases, street violence to reality television, illness to incarceration—in its search for a kind of sight shaped by humility and grace.
The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction
Rachel P. Maines - 1998
Doctors loathed this time-consuming procedure and for centuries relied on midwives. Later, they substituted the efficiency of mechanical devices, including the electric vibrator, invented in the 1880s. In The Technology of Orgasm, Rachel Maines offers readers a stimulating, surprising, and often humorous account of hysteria and its treatment throughout the ages, focusing on the development, use, and fall into disrepute of the vibrator as a legitimate medical device.
Gloria Steinem: The Kindle Singles Interview (Kindle Single)
Salamishah Tillet - 2013
Steinem has spent her life working for racial justice and women’s rights. In this interview, she speaks humorously and insightfully on everything from politics to pop culture. She reveals that the backlash she received for supporting Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential bid was “one of the worst experiences of my life,” and criticizes a history of feminism that forgets the deep alliances between early civil rights and women’s rights activists. Whether she’s defending Kim Kardashian from public vitriol or calling out the antiquated sexual assault policies of the U.S. military, Gloria Steinem is always engaged, always fighting for what she believes in. The interview was conducted by Salamishah Tillet, an Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. Tillet blogs for The Nation, and is the author of Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination. She is also the co-founder of A Long Walk Home, a non-profit organization that uses art therapy and the visual and performing arts to end violence against girls and women. Cover design by Adil Dara Kim.
Eat Sweat Play: How Sport Can Change Our Lives
Anna Kessel - 2016
Sport's for everyone . . . isn't it?Society has led us to believe that women and sport don’t mix. But why? What happens to the young girls who dare to climb trees and cartwheel across playgrounds? In her exploration of major taboos, from sex to the gender pay gap, sports journalist Anna Kessel discovers how sport and exercise should play an integral role in every sphere of our modern lives. Covering a fascinating range of women, from Sporty Spice to mums who box and breastfeed, Eat Sweat Play reveals how women are finally reclaiming sport, and by extension their own bodies, for themselves - and how you can too. 'Anna Kessel's book should inspire a whole generation of women. It ought to be on the school curriculum.'Hadley Freeman
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