Organ Transplantation: Meanings and Realities

In transplantation, the living parts of a person are offered in life or death to others, known or unknown, who are in the end stages of grave illness. Donated organs are implanted not only in the bodies of recipients, but in their beings. This thought-provoking book, a collaboration among an exceptional group of scholars and physicians, ponders the far-reaching connections of transplantation to human experiences and raises questions that are at once elemental and transcendent. It explores matters of life and death, body and mind, psyche and soul, self and other.
Sponsored by the Chicago-based Park Ridge Center for the Study of Health, Faith, and Ethics, the volume is the result of extended discussions among a group encompassing many religious and cultural traditions and many fields of expertise: philosophy, art, religion, folklore, psychiatry, anthropology, literature, history, social psychology, and surgery. Whether considering scientific advances in organ transplantation and their implications for medical morality, ambiguous images of organ transplantation in centuries of art and literature, the practices of organ procurement, or the complex bonds that are forged between donors, recipients, and their families, these essays carry our understanding beyond the typical scientific and pragmatic issues raised in discussions of bioethics and public policy. Organ Transplantation: Meanings and Realities enriches our social discourse by revealing some of transplantation's most profound and hidden truths.