The Pursuit of Perfection ─ The Promise and Perils of Medical Enchancement

What does it mean to live in a time when medical science can not only cure the human body but also reshape it? How should we as individuals and as a society respond to new drugs and genetic technologies? Sheila and David Rothman address these troubling questions with a singular blend of history and analysis, taking us behind the scenes to explain how scientific research, medical practice, drug company policies, and a quest for peak performance combine to exaggerate potential benefits and minimize risks. The Rothmans bring an authoritative clarity to a subject often obscured by rumor, commerce and inadequate reporting, revealing just what happens when physicians view patients’ unhappiness and dissatisfaction with their bodies–short stature, thunder thighs, aging–as though they were diseases to be treated.

Sheila M. Rothman is Professor of Public Health at Columbia University. Her books include Living in the Shadow of Death. Her articles in the New York Review of Books and other periodicals, often cowritten with David Rothman, address human rights and medicine. She is now investigating the social and ethical implications of linking race and ethnicity to genetic disease.

David J. Rothman is Bernard Schoenberg Professor of Social Medicine and History at Columbia University. His books have explored the history of prisons and mental hospitals and the impact of bioethics and law on medicine. He has just been named president of the Institute on Medicine as a Profession, funded by George Soros.


From the Hardcover edition.