Alderson, Priscilla; (2009) Book Reviews: Uncertainty in Medical Innovation: experienced pioneers in neonatal care. Sociology of Health and Illness , 31 (7) pp. 1111-1112. 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2009.01201_3.x.

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Abstract

Part of the Health, Technology and Society series, this book aims to analyse actual processes of managing uncertainty in neonatal intensive care. Examples are drawn from four months of research in a Dutch neonatal unit and time in a North American (USA) unit. The seven chapters explore the dynamic of change, the working relationships between the adults, numbers-centred modern intensive care, and ‘moral’ decision-making, using the examples of a few babies with uncertain prognoses. The final chapter, rather ominously called The end of the journey, reviews the book’s contribution, to report ‘fine-grained’ research, and to ‘provide insights into both the reshaping of societal responses to health innovations…and to open up the interface between diagnosis and prognosis, between men [sic] and machine and between medical facts and moral concerns, and to examine these interlinked yet discrete processes’ (p.180). The book includes many meticulous detailed reports of medical and nursing knowledge and protocols, complex clinical and social procedures, and intricate micro-records of babies’ fluctuating health status. The author argues that technological advances are reshaping the ethics of healthcare, and that morality is situated.

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