San Antonio College Library

Right now in the United States, fourteen thousand people are suffering from end stage liver disease and are on a waitlist for a donor organ. Another option is now gaining ground and providing a new hope.

While reporting a story from India, a New York television journalist has his left hand eaten by a lion; millions of TV viewers witness the accident. A well-known Boston hand surgeon wants to perform the first hand transplant on the reporter, but the problem is there is no hand available. A married woman from Wisconsin wants to give the reporter her husband's left hand--that is, after her husband dies.

Synthesizes the social, legal, medical, religious, and philosophical problems inherent in current social policy allowing for organ donation under the brain-death criterion. Henderson offers an investigation of the ethical quandaries inherent in the way transplantable organs are currently procured. He advocates the abandonment of the brain-death criterion in light of its adverse failures, and concludes by laying the groundwork for a new policy of death...

Every year some 30% of American corpses are cremated. And as journalist Annie Cheney discovered, no one keeps track of them before they reach their final destination. While the government has tight controls on organs and tissue meant for transplantation, there are other uses for cadavers that receive no oversight whatsoever: parts are used in commercial seminars to introduce new medical gadgetry; torsos are used for surgery practice; bodies are bought...

Conceived to provide a bone marrow match for her leukemia-stricken sister, teenage Anna begins to question her moral obligations in light of countless medical procedures and decides to fight for the right to make decisions about her own body. New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult tells the emotionally riveting story of a family torn apart by conflicting needs and a passionate love that triumphs over human weakness. Anna is not sick, but she...