Sociology's contribution to understanding the consequences of medical innovations.

The article discusses the articles “Patients-in-Waiting: Living Between Sickness and Health in the Genomics Era,” by Stefan Timmermans and Mara Buchbinder and “A Disservice to Advances in Newborn Genetic Screening: Comment on Timmermans and Buchbinder,” by Michael S. Watson, R. Rodney Howell and Piero Rinaldo. In the article the author offers his opinions on several points that are raised in the two articles and on sociology's contribution to the understanding of the consequences of medical innovations.