This reader features essays by leading medical sociologists/anthropologists and medical ethicists who consider the full range of cultural, economic, and social dimensions of bioethics This is the first text to view the field of bioethics from a sociological viewpoint — exploring how and why bioethics came to be a player in American medicine. Cutting-edge in perspective, it provides a firsthand look at how a new discipline and its practitioners emerge, and provides a model for applying sociology to a field of medicine. The book is useful to students of medical sociology and medical ethics.