Gay Becker is Professor of Medical Anthropology and Social and Behavioral Sciences and an investigator at the Institute for Health and Aging at the University of California, San Francisco. She is the author of Disrupted Lives: How People Create Meaning in a Chaotic World (California, 1997), Healing the Infertile Family: Strengthening Your Relationship in the Search for Parenthood (California, 1997), and Growing Old in Silence (California, 1980).