Medical Technologie and the Life World

Although the use of new health technologies in healthcare and medicine is generally seen as beneficial, there has been little analysis of the impact of such technologies on people’s lives and understandings of health and illness. This ground-breaking book explores how new technologies not only provide hope for cure and well-being, but also introduce new ethical dilemmas and raise questions about the 'natural' body.
Focusing on the ways new health technologies intervene into our lives and affect our ideas about normalcy, the body and identity, Medical Technologies and the Life World explores:
* how new health technologies are understood by lay people and patients
* how the outcomes of these technologies are communicated in various clinical settings
* how these technologies can alter our notions of health and illness and create ‘new illness’.