Beyond Second Opinions: Making Choices About Fertility Treatment [Paperback]

Judith Steinberg Turiel (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0520208544 | ISBN-13: 978-0520208544 | Publication Date: April 13, 1998 | Edition: 1

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Critical evaluations of infertility treatment present a minefield for collection development; these works often assume that the reader has a theoretical orientation and not a real-life information need. In this much-needed counterweight. Turiel, a medical writer and infertility patient, not only examines the mythos surrounding infertility medicine today but educates the reader in accessing, understanding, and evaluating the medical literature that reports its results. Her personal experience allows her to remain sensitive to the experience of patients and families while reporting honestly and objectively on the state of infertility treatment in the 1990s. Hers is a compassionate guide to a confusing landscape. Highly recommended for women's health collections in public and academic libraries.?Catherine Arnott Smith, Ctr. for Biomedical Informatics, Univ. of Pittsburgh
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

This may look forbidding at first, but stick with it to gain a lot of information and pick up some useful approaches. Turiel salts the lucid text with summaries of medical and scientific articles. She stresses how careful the patient must be, since the government is more sensitive to religious and political noise than to constructively informing a patient, and the health-care system is primarily driven toward profit rather than the care of patients. Gynecologists, especially, are willing to go with fads in treating supposedly infertile women, often paying more attention to drug company releases than to medical and scientific literature, and tending to keep at a method long after its ineffectiveness has become apparent. Turiel shows that discussions between patients and physicians are often sales pitches rather than attempts to provide information, so she gives questions for a patient to ask herself, her doctor, and her surgeon to clarify what each really wants to do. Consider this a landmark book in its field. William Beatty --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 419 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (April 13, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520208544
• ISBN-13: 978-0520208544
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,601,455 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good book with a fresh look on treatments and risks, January 7, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Colorado) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beyond Second Opinions: Making Choices About Fertility Treatment (Paperback)

This book certainly has a lot of information on various treatments (as you would likely find in many other books), but what makes this book unique is its in-depth look into the controversy which surrounds these treatments. The risks are covered in depth, where in most books this is not discussed. The benefits of certain treatments over others is discussed. The author is very knowledgable and gives an insiders view of the medical facts surrounding fertility treatments. My biggest surprise was how little is really understood and/or confirmed by the medical establishment. The research is often lacking and the results are anything but conclusive. I realized by reading this book why our RE (Dr) choose not to give my wife fertility drugs during her IUI treatments. My wife would have preferred anything possible that would potentially improves our changes. It is ture that most Dr's seem to throw "everything they got" at patients, even though doing so can be potentially dangerous. This is really an enderlying theme in this book, in my opinion. Often, the success rates do not correlate and are subject to question themselves. The author, who has personal experience as a DES daughter, relates the medical experiments of the past to many of the current treatments, which are more experimental in nature than we know. In our desparate quest to have children, most doctors are caving in to the pressure and giving patients drugs and treatments which are not well understood. This was very interesting to read and should help me and my wife make better choices. Overall, I found this book to be a fresh look on fertility treatments ... not just the facts, but the whole story, which is rarely discussed outside the medical community.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read This Book First!, December 5, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Beyond Second Opinions: Making Choices About Fertility Treatment (Paperback)

I would recommend reading this book first before going to a fertility clinic. I am undergoing fertility treatment and have therefore looked at several books on fertility and none of them tell you the truth like this book does. At the clinics, very little was explained to me and the doctors seemed eager to prescribe drugs without explaining the risks of multiple pregnancies and cancer. Basically, this book explains that fertility treatments are experimental and that the long term effects may be harmful, i.e. the risks may outweigh the benefits. So a couple considering fertility treatment should be well-informed and the best place to begin is this excellent, well-written and informative book.

22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Save your money, November 8, 1999

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Beyond Second Opinions: Making Choices About Fertility Treatment (Paperback)

I found this book to be the biggest waste of my time and money that any medicial book could be. I wouldn't have finished it, but I have to review it for a class. I chose this book because it looked like a fresh look at infertility. Now I realize she only has two points to make with this book. One, some treatments that infertile patients undergo have long term side effects. Two, there isn't much research to show the rate of "spontaneous" conceptions versus IVF and similar treatments. Would you like to be the control of that study? She hammers that people could get pregnant on their own if they tried longer. Nice thought, but if you to the put where you are considering IVF or GIFT, another 5 years is a long time. In addition to her research, I also found the writing to be poor. She used overly techinical language and writing when there was rarely a need.