Beyond Second Opinions: Making Choices About Fertility Treatment

By Judith Steinberg Turiel

Beyond Second Opinions is both an expos of the risks, errors, and distortions surrounding fertility medicine and an authoritative guide for people seeking treatment. Accessible, comprehensive, and extremely well-informed, this book takes the reader beyond hype to the hard data on diagnoses and treatments. Judith Steinberg Turiel, a consumer health activist and herself a veteran of fertility treatments, uses the most up-to-date medical literature to shed new light on difficult decisions patients face today and on reproductive questions society must begin to address now. Those who are seeking a more balanced perspective to help them make better, more informed decisions will find a wealth of information about current reproductive interventions--from simple fertility pills to dazzling experimental options--as well as a discussion of the non-medical forces (economic and political) that shape an individual's treatment choices and reproductive outcomes.

Despite quantities of information showered upon patients, they remain woefully misinformed; some fertility treatments may actually reduce chances for a successful pregnancy and threaten a patient's health. Turiel looks beyond surface claims to the real information, often uncovering counterintuitive findings and sometimes scandalous revelations. She exposes a realm of unregulated expansion, unscientific experimentation, and recent scandal over stolen embryos. Weaving together first-hand accounts, compelling stories, a range of scientific information, and lively anecdotes, Turiel addresses the persistent gulfs that separate medical professionals and health care consumers. In the process she arms laypeople with what they might not learn about infertility practices from doctors, patient education brochures, and the newspaper.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520208544
• ISBN13: 9780520208544
• Release Date: April 1998
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 419 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.3" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Read this book before embarking on infertility treatment

This book is one of the only sources--in any media--that presents unbiased information about fertility treatments. Next time you look at a website that purports to offer "education" about infertility, scan the ads that support the website. You'll find the major pharmeceutical companies that Turiel covers in her book are funding your "education." Turiel's arguments are lucid, and her research is impeccable. Many will not like this book because it presents the tough truth: fertility treatment risks the health of women, and fails for 60% of the people who try it.This is a very readable book--entirely approachable for lay persons. Turiel herself is not a doctor, and hence has no vested interest in promoting fertility treatment, or dissuading others from pursueing it, save her personal experience.An important clarification--another review stated that Turiel's mother had fertility treatments. This is incorrect. Turiel's mother took DES, a drug that was prescribed to healthy women to ensure against miscarriage and make pregnancies "more normal." It resulted in birth defects and cancer in many DES children. Turiel uses the example to make a powerful parallel with the rampant prescription of fertility drugs.

Read This Book First!

I would recommend reading this book first before going to a fertility clinic. I am undergoing fertility treatment and have therefore looked at several books on fertility and none of them tell you the truth like this book does. At the clinics, very little was explained to me and the doctors seemed eager to prescribe drugs without explaining the risks of multiple pregnancies and cancer. Basically, this book explains that fertility treatments are experimental and that the long term effects may be harmful, i.e. the risks may outweigh the benefits. So a couple considering fertility treatment should be well-informed and the best place to begin is this excellent, well-written and informative book.

A good book with a fresh look on treatments and risks

This book certainly has a lot of information on various treatments (as you would likely find in many other books), but what makes this book unique is its in-depth look into the controversy which surrounds these treatments. The risks are covered in depth, where in most books this is not discussed. The benefits of certain treatments over others is discussed. The author is very knowledgable and gives an insiders view of the medical facts surrounding fertility treatments. My biggest surprise was how little is really understood and/or confirmed by the medical establishment. The research is often lacking and the results are anything but conclusive. I realized by reading this book why our RE (Dr) choose not to give my wife fertility drugs during her IUI treatments. My wife would have preferred anything possible that would potentially improves our changes. It is ture that most Dr's seem to throw "everything they got" at patients, even though doing so can be potentially dangerous. This is really an enderlying theme in this book, in my opinion. Often, the success rates do not correlate and are subject to question themselves. The author, who has personal experience as a DES daughter, relates the medical experiments of the past to many of the current treatments, which are more experimental in nature than we know. In our desparate quest to have children, most doctors are caving in to the pressure and giving patients drugs and treatments which are not well understood. This was very interesting to read and should help me and my wife make better choices. Overall, I found this book to be a fresh look on fertility treatments ... not just the facts, but the whole story, which is rarely discussed outside the medical community.