Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2024 -

This volume is part of the "Infrastructure" series from MIT Press. As a healthcare data scholar participating in a larger infrastructure study, Hoeyer (Univ. of Copenhagen, Denmark) shares the unexpected paradoxes he consistently encountered in studying Denmark's heavily data-driven health-care system. Explaining Denmark as a world leader in digitized health-care infrastructures, he succinctly, entertainingly, and a tad philosophically reports the complex paradoxes built into collecting and using health-care data. He shows that data can simultaneously help and harm, inform and misinform, save or waste time and money. The author coins his own terms with brilliant pedagogical clarity, defining "intensified data sourcing," "the ontological multiplicity of data," "data wisdom," "data gospel," "data pandemic," and "data-political dynamics." He cleverly compares health-care data to drugs, offering the perfect analogy for something that greatly benefits and also greatly damages society simultaneously. Hoeyer concludes with Denmark's COVID-19 experience as a case study of a health-care data paradox. The book is exhaustively referenced, concluding with a notes section arranged by chapter, 52 pages of references, and a 12-page index. It is compelling enough for any audience, and excellent for data scientists and medical or informatics students.Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers, advanced undergraduates through faculty, and professionals.

This book is written from a unique perspective. Authors Livecchi, a clinical social worker, and Morton, a counseling psychologist, are themselves both survivors of congenital heart disease. As such, they are supremely qualified to discuss the physical, mental, and emotional particularities of dealing with these conditions. Realizing that congenital heart disease is something that follows an individual for life, the authors have created a roadmap for the adult survivors of related conditions. Covering everything from dealing with one's emotions and uncomfortable feelings to self-care and stress management tools and developing and maintaining relationships, this well-written book provides a window into the internal struggles and conversations a congenital heart disease patient may experience, including feelings and emotions they may be unable to express to friends and family. This book will give patients solace that they are not alone in what they feel. Filled with the authors' personal stories and experiences, this easy-to-read book will be useful for patients, families, friends, and even for the professionals that care for them. The final chapter has specific sections for loved ones, healthcare professionals, and mental health professionals. This book provides crucial information for congenital heart disease patients and their families in a practical, no-nonsense manner.Summing Up: Essential. General readers through faculty; professionals.

Mueller (independent scholar) presents the invention and global history of dialysis and then paints an unflattering picture of it in the US. Dialysis was the first medically and then commercially available machine that replaced a human organ. The ability to cleanse blood when kidneys failed did not offer a cure, but it prolonged patients' lives. By the early 1970s, the demand for and cost of the treatment were so high that Congress created a Medicare program to cover it. Not long after, however, the federal government allowed private firms to administer treatment. It was then, Mueller argues, that not only the American delivery of dialysis but also its much poorer outcomes separated the US from the rest of the world. The entrance of dialysis into the corporate practice of medicine split the expertise of medical personnel and the needs of patients from the commercial interests of those running the clinics. The author notes that patient advocacy groups have recently thrust dialysis care into the policy arena. The book is an excellent case study of the epidemiology and social determinants of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) in the US.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates and general readers.

The title can be taken as a double entendre, considering that this book critically analyzes vaccination policy. Scientifically, vaccines are a way of inducing the body to elicit an immune response, and vaccination policies have historically induced or compelled vaccine skeptics to get vaccinated against their will. The book starts with a series of classic case studies that illustrate the complexities of vaccination policies. The authors then discuss how governmental public health policies are typically skewed to promote the collective good. The book consistently emphasizes how this policy approach aligns with John Stuart Mill's philosophy of utilitarianism and his liberal perspective. In essence, the authors use vaccination policy as an extensive critique of Millian philosophy. Topics include the ethics of mandatory vaccination, the rationale for childhood vaccination rules, the credibility of vaccination guidelines and policy, and reasonable justifications for vaccination programs. The book is readable for audiences lacking a background in philosophy and science. Ample citations and contemporary references are provided. This is an excellent book for a bioethics collection.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.

The author of this complex, multi-disciplinary, and interdisciplinary study is a religious scholar who questions the ethics and politics of the use of gene drives to control mosquito populations, especially in Africa, where malaria still runs rampant. The chapter titles reveal much about the content of the book, covering malaria and its history, gene drives for malaria, reviews of regulations, stakeholder engagement in African discourses, opposition discourses, and ethical considerations. This book was designed to foster debate among scholars, especially philosophers, ethicists, biologists, etymologists, and politicians. But sometimes the technical language gets a bit daunting, even for scholars. Some philosophers would likely have preferred a more robust presentation of ethical theory, especially deontological moral theories (rights and duties), teleological moral theories (consequentialist), and/or virtue-based theories as they might be applied to environmental ethics. Others might have liked a bit more on natural order and human order in the context of environmentalism. Nevertheless, this is an outstanding scholarly work, even if it is a bit too challenging for undergraduate students and the general public.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals.

Myths of Trauma is essential reading for traumatologists and others who work with traumatized people. Paris (emer., psychiatry, McGill Univ., Canada) shows that faulty assumptions, or "myths," about trauma lead to misdiagnoses and reduce the effectiveness of therapy. Writing in a lively, reader-friendly style, he draws from the past and current literature as well as his experience as a psychotherapist to advocate for a "biopsychosocial" approach to remedy the aftereffects of trauma, which champions addressing all three key elements of life: body, mind, and society. Interventions such as exposure therapy and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR therapy) are effective for healing trauma, but not more so than well-designed and well-executed cognitive behavioral therapy. Some people benefit from medication, but others do not respond to any type of therapy. To better understand these interactions, Paris calls for more longitudinal studies of people treated for trauma, with consideration for context and culture. This and other research suggestions are well stated and a highlight of this admirable book.Summing Up: Essential. All readers.

Wulsin, MD, grabs readers' attention with Toxic Stress and does not let go. The book promises to address the how, why, and what of chronic stress, and explain how stress makes people ill, why chronic stress is so detrimental in comparison to acute stressors, and most importantly, what can be done to reduce and offset those debilitating effects. In this powerful text, Wulsin addresses coronary heart disease, functional disorders, diabetes, PTSD, and other illnesses that he argues involve shared pathways and are all stress-related chronic conditions. He is not claiming that stress is the "sole" cause for any of these illnesses, but he makes a clear case--both physiologically and psychologically--for the stress-related aspects of each illness and how much they actually have in common. The writing is clear, and Wulsin presents many, many cases. He explores pathways for treatment that approach toxic stress so that caregivers are equipped to help their patients' minds and bodies recover from it.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.

This collection compiles 30 autobiographical narratives from persons with disabilities working, or formerly working, in STEM fields. The writers variously experience sensory challenges, neurodivergences and mental illnesses, mobility impairments, and diabetes and other chronic illnesses, such as MS or lupus. The joys of graduations and achievements are counterposed with accounts of bullying, being underestimated, and dismissed, and stories of physical exhaustion and stress from managing illness and disregard. The metaphor of the chart, taken from navigation, is used to describe the uniqueness of the contributors' journeys, all at different stages of life and in their careers. Community and family support, assistive technologies, flexible workplace policies, and reliable health care are all things that facilitate success in STEM fields. The collection is entirely concerned with giving voice, and thus does not deeply engage the history of science as an institutional field, nor with scholarship in disability or crip studies, which would allow for more systemic reading across the experiences, something needed to generate policy and institutional responses that address the inequities and ablism assumed intrinsic to scientific work. Excellent for starting conversations about disability, bias, and ablism in STEM.Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals.

People who hold delusional beliefs--beliefs that do not represent what the majority would view as reality--are typically stigmatized. In the present work, Bortolotti (philosophy, Univ. of Birmingham, England) presents an alternative approach to the topic. Rather than viewing delusions as solely negative, Bortolotti suggests that there can be benefits, such as providing people causal explanations for traumatic events, which can contribute to their well-being by giving them a consistent sense of self and motivation to engage with others in the world. The book consists of two parts: the first focuses on delusions, how they are personal, unshakable investments that influence behavior, how they are difficult for others to believe, and the extent to which they contribute to one's identity. The second section of the book challenges the assumption that delusions are an indicator of psychological dysfunction. Instead, there may be advantages to holding delusional beliefs as long as they do not lead to self-harm. The book is a novel approach to the topic and will interest both general readers and professionals.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers.

Your Money or Your Life is a compelling, well-crafted examination of medical debt and bankruptcy. In less than 150 pages it documents and illustrates how, when, where, and why the financing of health care has taken this toxic turn. It shows that a rise in unregulated free-market approaches after 1980 often enabled high-income citizens to pay less than poor, uninsured, or minority patients. The encroachment of "consumer-directed health plans" left many workers with high deductibles and copayments that drained their savings, sometimes leading to the garnishment of their wages, foreclosures, or worse (p. 76). A failed system of health financing led even some well-endowed nonprofit hospitals such as Yale New Haven Hospital into troubling and unjust behavior, suing their own employees and then collecting penalties and interest over decades that cumulatively exceeded the initial overpriced billing amounts. Messac (Harvard Medical School) makes it clear that the root causes of these issues are health-care system flaws more than immoral or callous insurance companies, hospital CEOs, lawyers, or collection agencies. This great, quick read demonstrates why chastising and removing bad actors will never be a substitute for systemic health financing reform.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.