This volume is designed to provide a framework for studying the public policy implications of a broad range of biomedical technologies. Each chapter focuses on the policy issues and political activities surrounding a single technology. Contributors address such issues as new reproductive technologies, animal experimentation, contraceptive drugs, genetic markers and technology and the aging society.

This volume brings together the views of authors involved in many aspects of biomedicine-from research on basic biology to clinical invest igation of the causes and treatment of human disease to hospital adminis tration ·to health care planning on the state and Federal levels to Con gressionallegislation covering biomedical research, medical education, the development of medical technology, and the delivery of health care. The purpose is not to present a "party line" representing a consensus of these often divergent viewpoints, and we do not suggest that we have found solutions to the many problems encountered in the interaction of scientists, administrators, legislators, and the recipients of health care. These articles are intended primarily to communicate to both biomedical scientists and intelligent laymen the processes, social and political as well as scientific, whereby biomedical science advances, and the need for biomedical scientists to take an interest and initiative not only in scientific research but also in research on health care delivery and in related public issues before the legislative and administrative branches of government.

This handbook deals with many aspects of public policy evaluation: including methods; examples; professionalism studies; perspectives; concepts; substance; theory applications; dispute resolution; interdisciplinary interaction.

Each year, roughly a million new cases of cancer appear in the US, and more than 500,000 Americans die annually of premature death. Although medical progress has slowed cancer mortality, its incidence is increasing roughly six times faster than cancer mortality is decreasing. Breast cancer, in particular, has been increasing about one percent each year since 1973. At least two of the factors responsible for this surge in breast cancer are women's use of medically-prescribed synthetic hormones and the exposure of the entire population to chemicals such as dioxin. Both exposures increase the likelihood of breast cancer. Although many ethicists worry about involuntary societal imposition of chemicals such as dioxin, through industrial and agricultural processes, allegedly voluntary exposures also constitute both, a public-health problem and a biomedical-ethics difficulty. Physicians recommend synthetic hormones, for example, to women who apparently take them voluntarily. In the case of in vitro fertilization, doctors prescribe hormones to induce egg production and to increase the chances of reproduction for couples who are unable to have children. Despite the benefits of medical technologies such as hormone stimulation and in vitro fertilization, they also carry great risks. The price that childless women pay, for their opportunity to have children through in vitro fertilization, may be their own increased risk of diseases - such as breast cancer - that are hormone dependent.

First published in 1998, this volume examines how super-optimum decisions involve finding alternatives to controversies whereby Conservatives, Liberals, or other major groups can all come out ahead of their best initial expectations simultaneously. This book is organised in terms of concepts, methods, causes, process, substance, and the policy studies profession. Concepts clarify that policy evaluation traditionally involves: (1) Goals to be achieved; (2) Alternatives available for achieving them; (3) Relations between goals and alternatives; (4) Drawing a conclusion as to the best alternative in light of the goals, alternatives, and relations; and (5) Analysing how the conclusion would change if there were changes in the goals, alternatives, or relations. Super-optimizing also involves five related steps, but with the following improvements: (1) Goals are designed as conservative, liberal, or neutral; (2) Alternatives get the same designations; (3) Relations are simplified to indicate which alternatives are relatively high or low on each goal; (4) The conclusion involves arriving at an alternative that does better on Goal A than Alternative A, and simultaneously better on Goal B than Alternative B; and (5) The fifth step involves analysing the super-optimum or win-win alternative in terms of its feasibility as to the economic, technological, psychological, political, administrative, and legal matters.

"This entirely updated and enlarged Second Edition of a landmark reference/text continues to provide comprehensive coverage of every important aspect of policy studies--discussing concepts, methods, utilization, formation, and implementation both internationally and across each level of government."

Published in 1994, this book examines a small segment of the medical technology innovation process to characterize the manner in which the federal government influences small business-based investigators to participate or withdraw from the medical technology innovation process. It provides an historical account of the federal government's involvement in biomedical technology research and development, and traces the social and economic significance of this involvement.

Covers the methods, substance and process of public policy.