Deciding Who Lives

About the Book

In this powerful and probing look at the reality of everyday choices in neonatal intensive care units, Renée Anspach explores the life-and-death dilemmas that have fueled national debate. Using case studies taken during sixteen months of extensive interviewing and observation, Anspach examines the roles of parents, doctors, nurses, and bioethicists in deciding whether critically ill newborns—be they premature, terminally ill, or severely malformed—should be saved by medical technology, or at least kept alive a little longer.

About the Author

Renée R. Anspach is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan.

List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments

Chapter 1. Introduction:
The Dilemmas and Their Dimensions

Chapter 2. Theorizing About Life-and-Death Decisions:
A Critical Review

Chapter 3. Predicting the Future:
Why Physicians and Nurses Disagree

Chapter 4. Producing Assent:
Parents, Professionals,
and Life-and-Death Decisions

Chapter 5. Diffusing Dissent:
Parents, Professionals,
and Conflict in Decisions

Chapter 6. Beyond the Nursery:
Life-and-Death Decisions
and Paradoxes in Public Policy

Appendix 1. Field Research and the Sociology of
(Sociological) Knowledge

Appendix 2. Interviewing
Notes
Bibliography
Index