Beyond Second Opinions: Making Choices about Fertility Treatment

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Univ of California Press, Sep 23, 2022 - Medical - 406 pages
Beyond Second Opinions is both an exposé of the risks, errors, and distortions surrounding fertility medicine and an authoritative guide for people seeking treatment. Accessible, comprehensive, and extremely well-informed, this book takes the reader beyond hype to the hard data on diagnoses and treatments. Judith Steinberg Turiel, a consumer health activist and herself a veteran of fertility treatments, uses the most up-to-date medical literature to shed new light on difficult decisions patients face today and on reproductive questions society must begin to address now. Those who are seeking a more balanced perspective to help them make better, more informed decisions will find a wealth of information about current reproductive interventions—from simple fertility pills to dazzling experimental options—as well as a discussion of the non-medical forces (economic and political) that shape an individual's treatment choices and reproductive outcomes.

Despite quantities of information showered upon patients, they remain woefully misinformed; some fertility treatments may actually reduce chances for a successful pregnancy and threaten a patient's health. Turiel looks beyond surface claims to the real information, often uncovering counterintuitive findings and sometimes scandalous revelations. She exposes a realm of unregulated expansion, unscientific experimentation, and recent scandal over stolen embryos. Weaving together first-hand accounts, compelling stories, a range of scientific information, and lively anecdotes, Turiel addresses the persistent gulfs that separate medical professionals and health care consumers. In the process she arms laypeople with what they might not learn about infertility practices from doctors, patient education brochures, and the newspaper.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1998.
 

Contents

What Informed Patients
17
Fertility Medicines Older Woman
117
How Is Consent Informed?
184
Work Enough for All
222
Finding What You Need
260
Useful References and Resources
301
Finding and Using the Medical Literature
308
Elements of Informed Consent
314
Minimizing Fertility Problems
317
Doctors and Diagnoses
321
Glossary
325
Notes
335
Works Cited
361
Index
387
Copyright

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About the author (2022)

Judith Steinberg Turiel is a freelance medical writer with an Ed.D. from Harvard. She was the research liaison for DES Action, worked with the Coalition for the Medical Rights of Women, and is coauthor of Preventing Preterm Birth: A Parent's Guide (1988).

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