Designed to reflect important changes in health care and significant advancements in medical sociology, this student-friendly text provides a readable, interesting, and in-depth overview of the field. It offers solid coverage of traditional topics with a keen focus on the current issues and public policy debates affecting this dynamic area of study. Coverage examines issues such as giving clean needles to drug users; gender-based and sexual harassment of female physicians; legalizing medical marijuana; the dumping of patients by hospitals; medicine and the Internet; the profession of medicine; socialization of physicians; illness behavior; AIDS and Alzheimer's disease; social stress; health behaviors; alternative healers and alternative healing practices; the physician-patient relationship; the history of medicine; the role of technology in health care; changes in the health care system; health care financing; for-profit medicine; managed care programs; doctor-assisted suicide; organ donation policy; surrogate motherhood; physician truth-telling and confidentiality; the obligation to treat AIDS patients; recruiting physicians to underserved areas; the responsibility of parents for health care for their children; and the responsibility of employers for employee-related stress. For those interested in or practicing medicine, nursing, pharmacology, public health, and ancillary health.