Customer Reviews

Deciding Who Lives: Fateful Choices in the Intensive-Care Nursery

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This is very informative, and thought-provoking, and fulfills the intent of it's title. As a nurse and a parent, I realize the ambivalency felt by those who are involved with a baby needing intensive care. It will help those who have never been there understand just what a baby experiences in the Intensive-Care Nursery. Keep in mind though that this book was published in 1993, and it's statistics are not up-to-date.

Anspach shows how different groups of people (nurses, parents, surgeons, etc.) weigh life-and-death decisions. She puts the decisions in legal, institutional, political, economic and professional contexts. In other words, she describes the complexity and nuance of these decisions. Her prose is vivid and sensitive: you can imagine yourself on the scene and almost hear the anguish and frustration of some of the people she interviewed.

Anspach brilliantly shows how the fates and troubles of a wide variety of individuals are shaped by larger social forces. This book is sociology at its best.