The Patient in the Family diagnoses the ways in which the worlds of home and hospital misunderstand each other. The authors explore how medicine, through its new reproductive technologies, is altering the structure of families, how families can participate more fully in medical decision-making, and how to understand the impact on families when medical advances extend life but not vitality.

Hilde Lindemann Nelson, James Lindemann Nelson,

Chapter 1 A Rivalry of Care; Chapter 2 Why Families Matter; Chapter 3 An Ethics for Families; Chapter 4 Medical Decisionmaking; Chapter 5 When I'm Sixty-Four; Chapter 6 When Medicine Makes Babies; Chapter 7 With Medicine and Justice for All; Chapter 8 Coda;