Moving images are used as diagnostic tools and locational devices every day in hospitals, clinics and laboratories. But how and when did such issues come to be established and accepted sources of knowledge about the body in medical culture? How are the specialized techniques and codes of these imaging techniques determined, and whose bodies are studied, diagnosed and treated with the help of optical recording devices? "Screening the Body" traces the unusual history of scientific film during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, presenting material that is at once disturbing and engrossing. Lisa Cartwright looks at films like "The Elephant Electrocution". She brings to light eccentric figures in the history of the science film such as William P. Spratling who used Biograph equipment and crews to film epileptic seizures, and Thomas Edison's lab assistants who performed x-ray experiments on their own bodies. Drawing on feminist film theory, cultural studies, the history of film, and the writings of Foucault, Lisa Cartwright illustrates how this scientific cinema was a part of a broader tendency in society toward the technological surveillance, management, and physical transformation of the individual body and the social body. She frequently points out the similarities of scientific film to works of avant-garde cinema, revealing historical ties among the science film, popular media culture and elite modernist art and film practices. Ultimately, Cartwright unveils an area of film culture that has rarely been discussed, but which will leave readers scouring video libraries in search of the films she describes.

“Alan Cassels strips layers of expectation, hype, jargon, false-starts, and conflicts of interest off the medical screening mantra.” —Nortin M. Hadler, author of Worried Sick Why wouldn’t you want to be screened to see if you’re at risk for cancer, heart disease, or another potentially lethal condition? After all, better safe than sorry. Right? Not so fast, says Alan Cassels. His Seeking Sickness takes us inside the world of medical screening, where well-meaning practitioners and a profit-motivated industry offer to save our lives by exploiting our fears. He writes that promoters of screening overpromise on its benefits and downplay its harms, which can range from the merely annoying to the life threatening. If you’re facing a screening test for breast or prostate cancer, high cholesterol, or low testosterone, someone is about to turn you into a patient. You need to ask yourself one simple question: Am I ready for all the things that could go wrong? “With engaging clarity backed by academic rigor, Cassels discusses a variety of popular investigational procedures . . . an excellent way to start the important process of self-education.” —Quill & Quire “Smartly written and very readable.” —Brian Goldman, MD, author of The Secret Language of Doctors “Cassels tackles this touchy topic, looking at it test by test. His overarching message is that modern medicine has ‘overpromised’ with claims that screening will save our lives. He contends that with the lack of hard evidence on benefits, the evidence of harm from by such screening, as well as the multi-billion dollar interests at stake, we should approach this kind of screening with great precaution.” —Canadian Women’s Health Network

Inspired by Michel Foucault’s examination of state subjugation and control, this book considers post-structuralist notions of the ‘political technology of the body’ and 'the spectacle of the scaffold' as a means to analyse cinematic representations of politically-motivated persecution and bodily repression. Through a critique of sovereign power and its application of punishment ‘for transgressions against the state’, the collected works, herein, assess the polticised-body via a range of cinematic perspectives. Imagery, character construction and narrative devices are examined in their account of hegemonic-sanctioned torture and suppression as a means to a political outcome. Screening The Tortured Body: The Cinema as Scaffold elicits philosophical and cultural accounts of the ‘retrained’ body to deliberate on a range of politicised films and filmmakers whose narratives and mise-en-scène techniques critique corporeal subjugation by authoritarian factions.

This text provides therapists with all the necessary skills to screen patients for symptoms that may need a physician's expertise and to ensure that patients receive appropriate and timely medical care. It aims to enhance professional communication between therapists and physicians, facilitating the referral of patients from therapists to physicians.

Medical or health-oriented screening programs are amongst the most debated aspects of health care and public health practices in health care and public health ethics, as well as health policy discussions. In spite of this, most treatments of screening in the research literature restrict themselves to isolated scientific aspects, sometimes complemented by economic analyses or loose speculations regarding policy aspects. At the same time, recent advances in medical genetics and technology, as well as a rapidly growing societal focus on public health concerns, inspires an increase in suggested or recently started screening programs. This book involves an in-depth analysis of the ethical, political and philosophical issues related to health-oriented screening programs. It explores the considerations that arise when heath care interacts with other societal institutions on a large scale, as is the case with screening: What values may be promoted or compromised by screening programs? What conflicts of values do typically arise – both internally and in relation to the goals of health care, on the one hand, and the goals of public health and the general society, on the other? What aspects of screening are relevant for determining whether it should be undertaken or not and how it should be organised in order to remain defensible? What implications does the ethics of screening have for health care ethics as a whole? These questions are addressed by applying philosophical methods of conceptual analysis, as well as models and theories from moral and political philosophy, medical ethics, and public health ethics, to a large number of ongoing and proposed screening programs which makes this book the first comprehensive work on the ethics of screening. Analyses and suggestions are made that are of potential interest to health care staff, medical researchers, policy makers and the general public.

The Sociology of Medical Screening: Critical Perspectives, New Directions presents a series of readings that provide an up-to-date overview of the diverse sociological issues relating to population-based medical screening. Features new research data in most of the contributions Includes contributions from eminent sociologists such as David Armstrong, Stefan Timmermans, and Alison Pilnick Represents one of the only collections to specifically address the sociology of medical screening