First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.Robbie Davis-Floydis a Research Fellow at the University of Texas, Austin. She is the author of Birth as anAmerican Rite of Passage(1992) and co-editor of Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge: Cross-CulturalPerspectives(1997). Joseph Dumitis an NIMH Research Fellow in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is the co-editor of Cyborgs andCitadels: Anthropological Interventions in EmergingSciences, Technologies and Medicines(1997) and is assistant editor of Culture, Medicine and Society.