This book is the eleventh in the series produced by the Biosocial Society, all of which aim to address topics which benefit from the contribution of both biological and social scientists, and particularly from communication between them. It is a product of the Society's 1997 workshop which was held at the University of Durham's Stockton Campus, but also includes some additional contributors. We would like to thank the Society for its support of the meeting and of this volume.

We hope that the book demonstrates that an understanding of science and society, in this case sex and gender, are both essential for furthering our analyses of men's and women's experiences of health and disease, and that reading it is as informative and enlightening an experience as editing it has been.