Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Raising the Dead: Organ Transplants, Ethics, and Society by Ronald Munson ISBN: 0-19-513299-8 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)
Rating: 5
Summary: A sensitive treatment of a delicate topic
Comment: There is no question to my mind that an organ or tissue transplant can be a life-giving and life-changing miracle for a recipient. I am one who should know this; after all, for 11½ years I had the benefit of a cadaveric kidney transplant. Sadly, my transplant has not worked since March 2002, yet I still know the transforming power that a transplant can have on one's thinking and feeling as much as on one's health. Among other things, a transplant gives its recipient an appreciation for sacrificial generosity, and perhaps even some kind of vicarious atonement.
An organ transplant is a resurrection of sorts, for both donor and recipient. Part of the donor's body lives on in the reinvigorated bodies and souls of recipients. One can hardly avoid thinking of this in terms of religious analogies, though this book does not take the religious dimension any further than its title and a few references to the raising of Lazarus.
It is sobering, to say the least, to think of one's transplant as a gift of life from the dead. It is sobering to think of a donor family's grief, out of which that gift of life has come. One must also remember the thousands who die every year while waiting for a transplant of some kind, and those whose country's healthcare system does not provide universal free access to transplant assessments and procedures. One thinks of thousands of medically suitable potential donors who miss the opportunity to donate their organs, whether out of ignorance or from a hardhearted selfishness. Sadly, too, there are thousands of families who override the consent of their loved one, or are ignorant of it, and who bury their treasure in the ground'a treasure that could save the lives of six or more people. But above all else there is great joy at the extraordinary grace that organ donation represents, and countless lives changed for ever by these healing miracles. Surely 'no medical breakthrough is more spectacular, more hope-giving, or more fraught with ethical questions than organ transplantation.'
Raising the Dead ranks with The Nicholas Effect among the greatest literature written on the subject of organ transplantation in recent years. Written by a renowned medical ethicist with several philosophical volumes and three novels to his credit, this book takes a heart-rending and dramatic case-study approach, in an effort to 'remind us not to forget the personal and emotional dimension underlying the often arid discussions of transplant ethics' (p.24). Author Ronald Munson is a brilliant storyteller who has a way of simplifying complex issues and making them understandable to the lay reader. The ethical discussions and policy proposals one finds when reading this book make it required reading for anyone involved in the transplant process, whether recipients, teams of physicians and surgeons, or health policymakers.
Where the book gets somewhat more controversial is in its treatment of anencephalic infants, as well as its advocacy of organ sales (under exceptional circumstances), xenotransplantation and stem-cell regenerative therapy. Being so recently published, the book is right up-to-date with the latest frontiers of research, and considers the ethical implications of them all. It is furnished with a full apparatus of references for those who want to follow up with a study of the relevant source materials. The author has even included his email address for those who want to provide direct feedback.
I believe this book would make an excellent candidate for a no-holds-barred television documentary series. If such a documentary series were to be produced for a general audience, I am sure it would bring the issues surrounding organ transplantation and regenerative therapies the spotlight they surely deserve.
 |
Title: The Ethics of Organ Transplants: The Current Debate (Contemporary Issues (Buffalo, N.Y.).) by Arthur L. Caplan, Arthur Caplan, Daniel H. Coelho ISBN: 1573922242 Publisher: Prometheus Books Pub. Date: 01 March, 1999 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
 |
Title: The U.S. Organ Procurement System: A Prescription for Reform (Evaluative Studies.) by David L. Kaserman, A. H. Barnett ISBN: 084474171X Publisher: American Enterprise Institute Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
 |
Title: Transplantation Ethics by Robert M. Veatch ISBN: 0878408126 Publisher: Georgetown University Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 2002 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
 |
Title: Run, Boy, Run: A Novel (MILDRED L BATCHELDER HONOR BOOK (AWARDS)) by Uri Orlev, Hillel Halkin ISBN: 0618164650 Publisher: Walter Lorraine Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
 |
Title: Lorca: Living in the Theatre by Gwynne Edwards ISBN: 0720611482 Publisher: Peter Owen Publishers Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $46.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
