Bibliography



INLS 890-096 Consumer Health Information

Course Bibliography

Instructor: Professor Joanne Marshall

Course Text

Medical Library Association. Encyclopedic guide to gearching and finding health information on the Web. Anderson, P.F. and Allee, N.J., Eds. New York: Neil Schuman, 2004. Instructor’s copy available on reserve in SILS Library.

Books

Baker, Lynda M. and Manbeck, V. Consumer health information for public librarians, Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 2002.

Barclay, Donald A. Barclay, Halsted, Deborah D. The Medical Library Association consumer health reference service handbook New York. Edison, NJ: Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2001.

Rees, A, ed. The Consumer Health Information Source Book. 7th ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003

Journals

Journal of Consumer Health on the Internet

Patient Education and Counseling

Training Site

NIH Senior Health. Training Guide to Help Older Adults find Health Information Online

Consumer Health Information Seeking

Baker, L, Pettigrew, K. (1999). Theories for practitioners: two frameworks for studying consumer health information-seeking behavior. Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, 87(4):444-50.

Fox, S. (2006). Online Health Search 2006: Most Internet users start at a search engine when looking for health information online. Very few check the source and date of the information they find. Pew Internet & American Life Project. Available online at .

Fox, S. (2006). Finding answers online in sickness and in health. Pew Internet & American Life Project. Available online at .

Fox. S. (2005). Health information online: eight in ten Internet users have looked for health information online, with increased interest in diet, fitness, drugs, health insurance, experimental treatments, and particular doctors and hospitals. Pew Internet & American Life Project. Available online at .

McMullan M. (2006, Oct.). Patients using the Internet to obtain health information: how this affects the patient-health professional relationship. Patient Education and Counseling, 63(1-2):24-8.

Consumer Health Information Sources

Arkansas Consumer Health Information Network Resource Task Force, Consumer Health Section of the Medical Library Association. (2005). Bibliography of Consumer Health Books. Available online at .

Consumer health: an online manual. National Network of Libraries of Medicine. South Central Region, Houston Academy of Medicine – Texas Medical Center Library. Available online at: .

Consumer Health Section of the Medical Library Association. Web Sites you can Trust - The CAPHIS Top 100 List Available online at .

Kronick, JS. (2006). Is it a medical breakthrough: consumer health news sources you can rely on. Journal of Consumer Health on the Internet, 2006:10(1):17-31.

Lyman Maynard Stowe Library, Healthnet. (2005). Core Bibliography of Consumer Health Reference Books. Available online at: .

Evaluation of CHI Sources

Crespo, J. (2004). Training the health information seeker: quality issues in health information web sites. LibraryTrends, 53(2):

Stahl, L. & Spatz, M.A. (2003). Quality assurance in ehealth for consumers. Journal of Consumer Health on the Internet, 7(1):33-42.

Griffiths KM, Christensen H. (2005). Website quality indicators for consumers. JMIR,7(5) Article e55.

Burkell, J. (2005). “What does this mean?” How Web-based consumer health information fails to support information seeking in the pursuit of informed consent for screening test decisions. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 93(3):363-373.

Liability

Felsky, M. (1986). The legal liability of information professionals. Canadian Journal of Information Science, 14(3):1-15.

Gray, J.A. (1989, Jan.). The health sciences librarian's exposure to malpractice liability because of negligent provision of information. Bulletin of the Medical Library Association. 77(1):33-7.

Hafner, A.W. (1990, Fall). Medical information, health sciences librarians, and professional liability. Special Libraries, 81(4):305-8.

Consumer Health Section of the Medical Library Association. Disclaimers. Available at .

Muir, A, Oppenheim, C. (1995). The legal responsibilities of the health-care librarian. Health Libraries Review, 12:91-99.

Health Reference Interview

Allcock, J.A. (2000). Helping public library patrons find medical information – the reference interview. Public Library Quarterly, 18(3/4):21-27.

Borman, C.B., McKenzie, P.M. (2005). Trying to help without getting in their faces [Public library staff descriptions of providing consumer health information]. Reference & User Services Quarterly 2005; 45(2):133-146.

Brawn, TS. (2005). Consumer health libraries: what do patrons really want? Journal of the Medical Library Association 93(4):495-496.

National Network of Libraries of Mediine. The consumer health reference interview and ethical issues.

Health Information Services

Consumer Health Section of the Medical Library Association. How do you set up and run a Consumer Health Library? Available online at: .

Bruegel, R. (1998). Patient empowerment - a trend that matters. Journal of the AHIMA (American Health Informatics Association). 69(3):30-33.

Deering, M.J. (1996). Consumer health information demand and delivery: implications for libraries. Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, 84(2):209-216.

Hollander, S.M. (2000). Providing health information to the general public: a survey of current practices in academic health sciences libraries. 88(1):62-70.

Kouame, G., Harris, M., Murray, S. (2005). Consumer health information from both sides of the reference desk. Library Trends, 53(3):464-479.

Kovacs, D. (2003). Electronic collection development for consumer health information. Journal of Consumer Health on the Internet, 2003;7(4):31-52.

 

Kovacs, D. (2004). Why develop web-based health information workshops for consumers? Library Trends, 53(2):348-359.

Levy , L. (2004). Designing and using a consumer health web page: CHIP, the Consumer Health Information Project. Journal of Consumer Health on the Internet, 2004;8(3):1-16.

Marshall, J.G. & Haynes, R.B. (1983). Patient education and health outcomes: implications for library service. Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, 71(3):259-262.

McCall, K. (1999). Marketing the consumer health information service. (DocKit#12) Chicago,IL: Medical Library Association, 1999. Available at:

Panella, N.M. (1996, January). The patients’ library movement: an overview of early efforts in the United States to establish organized libraries for hospital patients. Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, 84(1):52-62.

Perryman, C. (2006, July). Medicus Deus: a review of factors affecting hospital library services to patients between 1790-1950. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 94(3):263-270.

Bolton, V, Brittain, M. (1994). Patient information provision: its effect on patient anxiety and the role of health information services and libraries. Health Libraries Review, 11(2):117-32.

Eysenbach G. (2000, June 24). Consumer health informatics. BMJ. 24;320(7251):1713-6.

Standards for Health Information Services

American Library Association, Reference and Adult Services Division, Standards and Guideline Committee. Guidelines for medical, legal and business responses at general reference desks. Rev. 2000 and 2001. Available online at:

Medical Library Association. (1996). The librarian’s role in the provision of consumer health information and patient education: Policy Statement by the Medical Library Association and the Consumer and Patient Health Information Section. Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, 84(2):238-239. Available online at .

Special Issues in CHI

Diverse Populations

Bibel, B. (2003). Finding consumer health information in other languages. Journal of Consumer Health on the Internet, 7(4):17-24.

Anderson, R. (1999, April). A case study in integrative medicine: alternative theories and the language of biomedicine.  Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine, 5 (2): 165-73, 175-6.

Gustafson DH, Hawkins RP, Boberg EW, et al. Chess: ten years of research and development in consumer health informatics for broad populations, including the underserved. Medinfo. 2001;10(Pt 2):1459-1563

Allen, M, Matthew, S, Boland, MJ. (2004). Working with immigrant and refugee populations: issues and Hmong case study. Library Trends, 53(2):301-328.

Alpi, K.M., Bibel, B.M.(2004). Meeting the health Information needs of diverse populations. Library Trends 2004:53(2):268-282.

Browne A; Fiske J. (2001, March). First Nations women's encounters with mainstream health care services. Western Journal of Nursing Research, 23(2):126-47.

Rudd, R.E., Comings, J.P., & Hyde, J.N. (2003). Leave no one behind: improving health and risk communication through attention to literacy. Journal of Health Communication, 8(4 Supp.1):104-115

Complementary and Alternative Health Care

Crumley, ET. (2006, January). Exploring the roles of librarians and health care professionals involved with complementary and alternative medicine. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 94(1): 81–89.



McFarland B., Bigelow D., Zani B., Newsom J., Kaplan M. (2002, Oct.). Complementary and alternative medicine use in Canada and the United States. American Journal of Public Health, 92(10):1616-8.

Evidence-based CHI

Eysenbach G & Diepgen TL. The role of e-health and consumer health informatics for evidence-based patient choice in the 21st century. JMIR, 2001 19: 11-17.

Hammerschlag, R. (2006). Evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine: Back to basics. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 12(4):349-350.

Hendler, G.Y. (2004). Why evidence-based medicine matters to patients. Journal of Consumer Health on the Internet, 8(2):1-14.

Health Literacy

Burnham, E, Peterson, E.B. (2005). Health information literacy: a library case study. Library Trends, 53(3):422-433.

Hammond, P.A. (2004, March). Developing a health literacy action plan. MLA News, 364:1,10.

Nutbeam, D. (2000). Health literacy as a public health goal: contemporary health education and communication strategies into the 21 st century. Health Promotion International, 15(3):259-267.

The Experience of Health and Illness

Use this list to select your book for Assignment 4. Other titles may be negotiated with the instructor.

Some, perhaps most, are personal narratives, while others are thoughtful commentaries on the role of Western culture in health and illness. Many of these titles were taken from an excellent bibliography compiled by the Saga Centre for Studies in Autobiography, Gender, and Age, which is available online: .

Abraham, Laurie Kaye. Mama Might Be Better Off Dead: The Failure of Health Care in Urban America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

This is a refreshing chronicle of the inadequate patchwork of federally funded health programs caring for our nation's urban poor. Journalist Abraham uses the medically plagued Banes family as a springboard for his analyses of the convoluted, mysterious, and at times nonsensical healthcare system that holds the urban poor captive. Unlike Alex Kotlowitz, whose There Are No Children Here ( LJ 4/1/91) elucidates the glaring inequities in our social system through the powerful story of two boys, Abraham uses the Banes's ill health as a pulpit for reciting numerous studies, quoting scholars, and commenting on current policy debates. Abraham does an excellent job of explaining the maze of healthcare programs available to the urban poor. More importantly, he clearly identifies in human and policy terms how these same programs have failed a population desperately in need of help. Recommended for most collections. From Library Journal - Karen A. Wolin, Univ. of Illinois Coll. of Medicine at Chicago (from Amazon)

Allende, Isabel. Paula. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.

"Listen, Paula. I am going to tell you a story so that when you wake up you will not feel so lost." So says Chilean writer Isabel Allende (The House of the Spirits) in the opening lines of the luminous, heart-rending memoir she wrote while her 28-year-old daughter Paula lay in a coma. In its pages, she ushers an assortment of outrageous relatives into the light: her stepfather, an amiable liar and tireless debater; grandmother Meme, blessed with second sight; and delinquent uncles who exultantly torment Allende and her brothers. Irony and marvelous flights of fantasy mix with the icy reality of Paula's deathly illness as Allende sketches childhood scenes in Chile and Lebanon; her uncle Salvatore Allende's reign and ruin as Chilean president; her struggles to shake off or find love; and her metamorphosis into a writer. (from Amazon)

Becker, Gay. Disrupted Lives: How People Create Meaning in a Chaotic World. CA: University of California Press, 1997.

Our lives are full of disruptions, from the minor--a flat tire, an unexpected phone call--to the fateful--a diagnosis of infertility, an illness, the death of a loved one. In the first book to examine disruption in American life from a cultural rather than a psychological perspective, Gay Becker follows hundreds of people to find out what they do after something unexpected occurs. Starting with bodily distress, she shows how individuals recount experiences of disruption metaphorically, drawing on important cultural themes to help them reestablish order and continuity in their lives. Through vivid and poignant stories of people from different walks of life who experience different types of disruptions, Becker examines how people rework their ideas about themselves and their worlds, from the meaning of disruption to the meaning of life itself.

Becker maintains that to understand disruption, we must also understand cultural definitions of normalcy. She questions what is normal for a family, for health, for womanhood and manhood, and for growing older. In the United States, where life is expected to be orderly and predictable, disruptions are particularly unsettling, she contends. And, while continuity in life is an illusion, it is an effective one because it organizes people's plans and expectations. (from Amazon)

Brody, Howard. Stories of Sickness. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987.

Our personalities and our identities are intimately bound up with the stories that we tell to organize and to make sense of our lives. To understand the human meaning of illness, we therefore must turn to the stories we tell about illness, suffering, and medical care. Stories of Sickness explores the many dimensions of what illness means to the sufferers and to those around them, drawing on depictions of illness in great works of literature and in non-fiction accounts. The exploration is primarily philosophical but incorporates approaches from literature and from the medical social sciences. When it was first published in 1987, Stories of Sickness helped to inaugurate a renewed interest in the importance of narrative studies in health care. (from Amazon)

Cousins, Norman. Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1979.

The premise of Norman Cousins's enormously influential work is that the human mind is capable of promoting the body's capacity for combating illness and healing itself even when faced with a seemingly hopeless medical predicament. The author recounts his personal experiences while working in close collaboration with his doctor to overcome a crippling and supposedly irreversible disease, and illustrates the life-saving and ultimately life-prolonging benefits to be gained by taking responsibility for one's own well-being. (from Amazon)

Faden, Ruth R., Beauchamp, Tom L., & King, Nancy M.P. A History and Theory of Informed Consent. New York : Oxford University Press, 1986.

Clearly argued and written in nontechnical language, this book provides a definitive account of informed consent. It begins by presenting the analytic framework for reasoning about informed consent found in moral philosophy and law. The authors then review and interpret the history of informed consent in clinical medicine, research, and the courts. They argue that respect for autonomy has had a central role in the justification and function of informed consent requirements. Then they present a theory of the nature of informed consent that is based on an appreciation of its historical roots. An important contribution to a topic of current legal and ethical debate, this study is accessible to everyone with a serious interest in biomedical ethics, including physicians, philosophers, policy makers, religious ethicists, lawyers, and psychologists. This timely analysis makes a significant contribution to the debate about the rights of patients and subjects. (from Amazon)

Fadiman, Ann. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997.

Lia Lee was born in 1981 to a family of recent Hmong immigrants, and soon developed symptoms of epilepsy. By 1988 she was living at home but was brain dead after a tragic cycle of misunderstanding, overmedication, and culture clash: "What the doctors viewed as clinical efficiency the Hmong viewed as frosty arrogance." The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, written with the deepest of human feeling. Sherwin Nuland said of the account, "There are no villains in Fadiman's tale, just as there are no heroes. People are presented as she saw them, in their humility and their frailty--and their nobility." (from Amazon)

French, Marilyn. A Season in Hell: A Memoir. New York: Knopf, 1998.

Marilyn French, author of My Summer with George, The Women's Room, and Her Mother's Daughter, learns at the beginning of this memoir that she has esophageal cancer. (A smoker for 46 years, she had ignored friends and doctors who implored her to quit.) She is told that one survives metastasized esophageal cancer. A Season in Hell is French's personal story of her journey through the nightmares of aggressive cancer treatment, seizures, a two-week coma, kindhearted nurses, and uncompassionate doctors. One told her not to get her hopes up when her tumor disappeared, and a neurologist said (prophetically?), "Doctors hate writers; they always say horrible things about us." It is also French's story of triumph--because she succeeds in conquering the cancer, though she emerges from the struggle far from well, with "just about every system in my body [damaged] by chemotherapy or radiation." Readers share the worst and the best with French, and by the end of the book get to know this woman, feel a part of her humanity, respect her courage, and cherish her circle of close friends (including Gloria Steinem) and relatives who gave her so much when she needed it most. --Joan Price (from Amazon)

Gallagher, Hugh. Black Bird Fly Away: Disabled in an Able-Bodied World. Arlington, VA.: Vandamere Press, 1998.

Gallagher was a "young and beautiful" college student when he was struck down by polio and forced to become part of a world he had given little thought to, and when he had, it was with a certain repugnance-the world of the disabled. This unusual autobiography is a collection of writings, some previously unpublished, by a man who is recognized today as the father of the Architectural Barriers Act of 1968 and the grandfather of the Americans with Disabilities Act. He takes readers on a journey through his life, his reaction to his own disability, his public courage, and his very private desperation. The essay he wrote for his application to attend Oxford University is surely a model even today for students preparing their college-admissions essays. In public addresses, essays, and editorial pieces, he clarifies the important issues that confront disabled people and the important accommodations that have been made to help them live full and contributing lives. Gallagher is a masterful communicator. His writings of his youthful confrontation with the horrors of paralysis are powerful and poignant. The evolution of his own feelings about himself as a paraplegic and as a human being are woven throughout this thought-provoking book.

Cynthia J. Rieben, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA

Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. (from Amazon)

Hammerschlag, Carl A. The Dancing Healers: A Doctor's Journey of Healing with Native Americans. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988.

The author spent 20 years as a physician working among Native Americans in the Southwest. He began with a conventional medical outlook but grew to regard the traditional Indian ways of ritual, healing, and dying with awe and admiration. This is a glowing personal account of his experiences, which he claims have enabled him to meld Jewish and Native American spiritual concepts and become a "dancing healer," one who is able to help others pursue the meaning and wisdom of lifeand cure their diseases. For public libraries.Judith Eannarino, George Washington Univ. Lib., Washington, D.C.

Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. (from Amazon)

Henderson, Cary Smith & Andrews, Nancy. Partial View; an Alzheimer's journal. Dallas, TX : Southern Methodist University Press, 1998.

Cary Henderson, a history professor, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1985. As the disease progressed, Henderson was forced to leave his teaching post. Frustrated by his failing memory and his physical inability to write, he began to use a tape recorder as a creative outlet. This book provides the edited text of these tapes that record his narrowing world. Accompanied by black and white photographs of moments from Henderson's life with his family. (from the Toronto Alzheimer Society Library)

Hoffman, Amy. Hospital Time. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997.

Behind every AIDS statistic we hear on television or read in the newspaper are the uncounted?the friends, co-workers, and family whose lives are irrevocably altered. Hoffman, a writer living in Boston, is one of these people. Her memoir is striking in its direct and often painful portrayal of her experiences as healthcare proxy for Mike Riegle, a gay friend. Hoffman struggles with anger and resentment as her life becomes subsumed by the daily logistics, issues, and problems of a man in the process of dying. We hear of Riegle's life, we meet his friends, and we watch his death, all through Hoffman's unflinching eyes. A foreword by Urvashi Vaid (Virtual Equality, LJ 10/1/95) helps to place the book within a necessary political perspective. Those who have been touched by AIDS as well as caregivers who struggle with their conflicting feelings should read this work. Recommended for most public libraries and all academic medical collections. Jerilyn Veldof, Univ. of Arizona Lib., Tucson. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. (from Amazon)

Ignatieff, Michael. Scar Tissue. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994.

In this fictionalized account of a mother's death from Alzheimer's disease told from the perspective of a son, Ignatieff (Asya, LJ 9/15/91) examines the relationships between life, consciousness, disease, and death. Father was a Russian emigre and soil chemist, Mother was a painter with a family history of the disease, and their two sons have grown up to become a neurological researcher and a philosophy professor. It is the philosopher who tells the story, dipping into childhood memories as he recounts embarrassing and excrutiating details of his mother's decline and death. The philosopher probes unceasingly to comprehend his mother's degree of understanding as her memory and sense of self shrink, admiring the abstract beauty of the brain scan that the neurologist dispassionately interprets. And it is the philosopher who finds the seeds of the same disease inside himself. This novel is both beautiful in its quiet celebration of each moment of life and almost unbearable in its exploration of questions most often unasked. This awesome piece of work should be in most collections.

--Michele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., Va. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. (from Amazon)

Kidder, Tracy. Mountains Beyond Mountains. New York: Random House, 2004.

At the center of Mountains Beyond Mountains stands Paul Farmer. Doctor, Harvard professor, renowned infectious-disease specialist, anthropologist, the recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant, world-class Robin Hood, Farmer was brought up in a bus and on a boat, and in medical school found his life’s calling: to diagnose and cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most. This magnificent book shows how radical change can be fostered in situations that seem insurmountable, and it also shows how a meaningful life can be created, as Farmer—brilliant, charismatic, charming, both a leader in international health and a doctor who finds time to make house calls in Boston and the mountains of Haiti—blasts through convention to get results. (excerpted from the review at Amazon)

Korda, Michael. Man to Man: Surviving Prostate Cancer. New York: Random House, 1996.

For Simon and Schuster editor-in-chief and author Korda (Charmed Lives, 1979), it was devastating: on October 22, 1994 he was told he had cancer. Like Korda, over 200,000 American men are told every year that they have joined the prostate cancer club. The disease will take over their lives as fears of incontinence, impotence, pain, and death begin to spook their minds. Korda writes frankly of his experience and translates his sick-role ordeal into a read as artful as a novel. Although few readers will have Korda's entree to the medical establishment, his clear and practical not-to-be-left-to-the-last-minute logistical advice, frank and informative presentation of his prostate cancer trials, and follow-up advice on support groups make this moving personal account highly recommended. [See also Swanton's "An Rx for Men's Health Collections," LJ 1/96, p. 53-56; previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/96.] James Swanton, Harlem Hospital Lib., New York. - James Swanton, Harlem Hospital Lib., New York. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. (excerpted from the Amazon review)

Kubler-Ross, Elizabeth. On Death and Dying.

One of the most famous psychological studies of the late twentieth century, On Death and Dying grew out of an interdisciplinary seminar on death, originated and conducted by Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. In On Death and Dying, Dr. Kübler-Ross first introduced and explored the now-famous idea of the five stages of dealing with death: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. With sample interviews and conversations, she gives the reader a better understanding of how imminent death affects the patient, the professionals who serve the patient, and the patient's family, bringing hope, solace, and peace of mind to all involved. (excerpted from the Amazon review)

Lorde, Audre. The Cancer Journals. New York: Spinsters, Ink, 1980.

Lorde began writing her journal entries six months after her radical mastectomy; they illustrate her process of integrating the crisis into her life, retelling her experience from detection to follow-up therapies. Lorde's most passionate battle was waged against silence. "This is it, Audre," Lorde wrote. "You're on your own." Where was the model? she asked, seeking another voice to speak to her experience. In The Cancer Journals, Audre Lorde has given us a rich, powerful model that is, alas, still relevant. (excerpted from the Amazon review)

MacDonald, Betty. The Plague and I. New York: The Akadine Press, 1948.

You know how sometimes friendship blossoms in the Þrst few moments of meeting? “Something clicked,” we say. Well, that’s what discovering Betty MacDonald was like for me: I happened to read a couple of pages of one of her books and — click — knew right away that here was a vivacious writer whose friendly, funny, and Þery company I was really going to enjoy. Although MacDonald’s Þrst and most popular book, The Egg and I, has remained in print since its original publication, her three other volumes have been unavailable for decades. The Plague and I recounts MacDonald’s experiences in a Seattle sanitarium, where the author spent almost a year (1938-39) battling tuberculosis. The White Plague was no laughing matter, but MacDonald nonetheless makes a sprightly tale of her brush with something deadly. Anybody Can Do Anything is a high-spirited, hilarious celebration of how “the warmth and loyalty and laughter of a big family” brightened their weathering of The Great Depression. In Onions in the Stew, MacDonald is in unbuttonedly frolicsome form as she describes how, with husband and daughters, she set to work making a life on a rough-and-tumble island in Puget Sound, a ferry-ride from Seattle. (excerpted from the Amazon review)

Moynihan, Ray & Cassels, Alan. Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients. New York: Nation Books, 2005.

Science and medicine writers Moynihan and Cassels conjecture that most Americans believe, based on information gleaned from a deluge of pharmaceutical-company advertisements, that conditions such as hypertension, high cholesterol, menopause, and chronic constipation are bona fide diseases. They quote reputable medical experts, however, who refute such understandings. What's more, they suggest that billions of precious and diminishing health-care dollars are squandered treating those nondiseases of healthy, wealthy Americans and would be better spent treating the legitimately sick poor and fighting the international AIDS epidemic. Quoting former Merck CEO Henry Gadsen--who, in a 1976 Fortune article, confessed that "it had long been his dream to make drugs for healthy people. Because then, Merck would be able to 'sell to everyone'"--they lay the blame for the misdirected billions at the feet of just such pharmaceutical giants as Merck. Finally, they counterpoint glossy pharmaceutical ad campaigns with alternatives that consumers may consider before asking their doctors for prescription drugs they saw touted on TV. Donna Chavez. Copyright © American Library Association.(excerpted from the Amazon review)

Newman, Katherine. A Different Shade of Gray: Mid-Life and Beyond in the Inner City. New York: New Press, 2003.

Popular magazines abound with references to the beneficent lives of Americans in their older years. In this excellent work, Newman, an urban anthropologist at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, contrasts this generalization with the realities of middle-aged and elderly African Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Dominican immigrants in New York City. Her basic sources include the 1995 MacArthur Foundation survey of mid-life development in the United States, a companion study of aging ethnic and racial minorities in New York City, and in-depth personal interviews with a sample of those minority elders. The oral histories of their life-forming young-adult years reveal consistent frustrations with in an environment of deteriorating neighborhoods, vanishing economic opportunities, devastating invasions of crack cocaine, broken families headed by females, minimal community support systems, and outmoded public assistance policies. Newman's research reveals that elderly Americans in New York City's inner enclaves are generally poor and stressed, too often overwhelmed by financial and personal worries and obligations-an unfortunate, though potentially correctable, aberration to what luckier elders in America accept as a relatively sanguine time of life. Academic and larger public libraries will want to purchase this.

Suzanne W. Wood, emerita, SUNY Coll. of Technology at Alfred. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.(excerpted from the Amazon review)

Price, Reynolds. A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing. New York: Plume, 1995.

While walking with Price across the Duke University campus in the spring of 1984, a colleague noticed Price's awkward gait. That incident marked the beginning of the novelist's four-year "collision with spinal cancer and paralysis." This remarkable memoir recalls the first surgery that failed to stop the tumor (which Price imagined as an "alien and deadly eel"), the radiation treatment that destroyed the nerves in his spine and the use of his legs, the religious vision promising healing, the pain-killing drugs overprescribed by unsympathetic doctors, and the friends and family who rallied around him. Price refused to succumb to self-pity, to ask the pointless tired old question of "Why me?" He writes, "The only answer is of course Why not ?" Now, clear of cancer though not cured, Price has a new life not only as a paraplegic but as a great writer whose creative energies have rebounded. Since his crisis, he has produced 14 books; this work features poems written during that period. Highly recommended. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/94.

- Wilda Williams, Library Journal. (excerpted from the Amazon review)

--. On doctoring: stories, poems, essays. Richard Reynolds & John Stone (Eds.). New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.

Few physicians and fewer medical students read novels. Nonetheless, literature has much to teach physicians and medical students about the type of work they have chosen. This anthology, aimed primarily at first-year medical students, is made up of bite-sized offerings. It includes 130 pieces (mostly poems, but also stories, essays, and one short play) by 81 authors, with all the pieces chosen because they illuminate an aspect of the practice of medicine.

The core of the collection is made up of selections from writers whose stories will be familiar to many readers of the Journal; these include W. Somerset Maugham, William Carlos Williams, Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor, Jorge Luis Borges, and Raymond Carver. Nor will the poets (writing mostly about death and suffering) surprise the reader; they include Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Archibald MacLeish, Dylan Thomas, Denise Levertov, and one of the book's coeditors, John Stone. The best essays on medical practice in the collection were originally published in the Journal and include pieces by physician-writers Lewis Thomas, Robert Coles, Carola Eisenberg, Joseph Hardison, and David Hilfiker. Other contemporary physician-writers are also well represented, including Lawrence Altman, Melvin Konner, Abraham Verghese, Perry Klass, Jon Mukand, and Ethan Canin. (excerpted from the Amazon review)

Sacks, Oliver. A Leg to Stand On. New York: Summit Books, 1984.

Dr. Oliver Sacks's books Awakenings, An Anthropologist on Mars and the bestselling The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat have been acclaimed for their extraordinary compassion in the treatment of patients affected with profound disorders.

In A Leg to Stand On, it is Sacks himself who is the patient: an encounter with a bull on a desolate mountain in Norway has left him with a severely damaged leg. But what should be a routine recuperation is actually the beginning of a strange medical journey when he finds that his leg uncannily no longer feels part of his body. Sacks's brilliant description of his crisis and eventual recovery is not only an illuminating examination of the experience of patienthood and the inner nature of illness and health but also a fascinating exploration of the physical basis of identity. (excerpted from the Amazon review)

Siegel, Bernie S. Love, Medicine, and Miracles. New York: Harper & Row, 1986.

Siegel, a New Haven surgeon, believes that the power of healing stems from the human mind and will, that his scalpel only buys time against cancer, and that self-love and determination are more important than choice of therapy. His philosophy has caused radical changes in his practice. Siegel recounts many arresting anecdotes: joyous stories of patients who survived against all odds, sad chronicles of those who seemingly gave up and assented to their own deaths. The author's credentials make this one of the more plausible books on the mind-body connection. For most public libraries and holistic health collections. Judith Eannarino, George Washington Univ. Lib., Washington, D.C.

Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. (excerpted from the Amazon review)

Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors. New York: Picador, 2001.

In Illness as Metaphor , which focused on cancer, Sontag argued that the myths and metaphors surrounding disease can kill by instilling shame and guilt in the sick, thus delaying them from seeking treatment. She sees a similar process at work in the case of AIDS, the modern epidemic that has called forth metaphors of plague, implacable viral invaders, a scourge from the Third World. Such metaphors foster the stigmatizing of AIDS patients while spreading misinformation and panic, she argues, further claiming that clinical reports on the course of AIDS from "fledgling" to "full-blown" tacitly support the far-from-proven theory that everyone who tests positive for the AIDS antibody will die of the diease. The theory that AIDS originated in Africa, also unproven, feeds into the West's political paranoia and activates racial and sexual stereotypes. Regrettably, Sontag all but ignores intravenous drug users stricken with AIDS, and her curt dismissal of alternative therapies is shortsighted. Though some of her key points are already standard features of public discourse, this brief, brilliant essay discounts many of the fears and illusions surrounding the pandemic. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. (excerpted from the Amazon review)

Weisman, Jamie. As I Live and Breathe: Notes of a Patient-Doctor. North Point Press, 2002.

Weisman, a physician afflicted with congenital autoimmune deficiency disease (CADD) a rare defect of the immune system needs monthly blood infusions to survive. In this gripping autobiography, she selectively chooses vignettes that reveal how CADD has manifested itself in the tumultuous events of her life. From her early teens, when the disease first became apparent, through surgery for a severe facial deformity, a parotidectomy, and a variety of hospital stays and chronic illnesses, Weisman tells her own harrowing tale of life with CADD. Writing courageously as both doctor and patient, Weisman also describes her marriage, her decisions to become a physician and to have a baby, and her family and patients. Doctor-as-patient books can be very exciting, and this ranks with the best of the genre, such as David Biro's One Hundred Days and Robert Pensack's Raising Lazarus. James Swanton, Harlem Hosp. Lib., New York

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. (excerpted from the Amazon review)

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