De la pilule au bébé-éprouvette

With swelling ranks of medical practitioners and spiralling healthcare demand, the western world is becoming increasingly medicalized. This trend is especially pronounced in the field of reproductive health, where medical techniques and treatments are providing a means to "control" reproductive risks: reduction of maternal and infant mortality, wideranging variety of contraceptive methods, infertility treatments, prenatal screening tests, sexual stimulants such as Viagra®, and so on. But as medicine encroaches into the private and intimate aspects of life, are individuals still free to make their own sexual and reproductive choices ? Medicalization has modified the place and role of patients, who are no longer passive subjects, but active players in their healthcare. What is the patient’s true weight in the decision-making process ? This book seeks to address this question from the individual’s viewpoint, by exploring the "other side of the picture". Via the contrasting visions of sociologists, demographers, physicians, epidemiologists, psychosociologists and economists, it looks beyond the Manichean representations of medicalization as "all-good" or "all-evil", and sheds light on the true challenges involved.

Élise de La Rochebrochard est chercheure à l'Ined et travaille sur la biométrie de la santé reproductive et la santé des enfants.