Ronald Munson – författare

Perhaps no medical breakthrough in the twentieth century is more spectacular, more hope-giving, or more fraught with ethical questions than organ transplantation. Each year some 25,000 Americans are pulled back from the brink of death by receiving vital new organs. Another 5,000 die while waiting for them. And what distinguishes these two groups has become the source of one of our thorniest ethical questions.In Raising the Dead, Ronald Munson offers a vivid, often wrenchingly dramatic account of how transplants are performed, how we decide who receives them, and how we engage the entire range of tough issues that arise because of them. Each chapter begins with a detailed account of a specific case--Mickey Mantle's controversial liver transplant, for example--followed by careful analysis of its surrounding ethical questions (the charges that Mantle received special treatment because he was a celebrity, the larger problems involving how organs are allocated, and whether alcoholics should have an equal claim on donor livers). In approaching transplant ethics through specific cases, Munson reminds us of the complex personal and emotional dimension that underlies such issues. The book also ranges beyond our present capabilities to explore the future possibilities in xenotransplantation (transplanting animal organs into humans) and stem cell technology that would allow doctors to grow new organs from the patient's own cells.Based on extensive scientific research, but written with a novelist's eye for the human condition, Raising the Dead shows readers the reality of organ transplantation now, the possibility of what it may become, and how we might respond to the ethical challenges it forces us to confront.

Ronald Munson plunges us into the tense and tangled world of organ transplantation. Using vivid, often gut-wrenching cases as points of departure, Munson shows us how transplants are performed, decisions are made, and ethical and social issues arise. Fast-paced and readable, the science and medicine lucidly explained, this book forces us to confront the human and moral dimensions of using donor organs to save lives.Munson uses case examples to explore, explain, and try to resolve a handful of crucial problems arising from acquiring and allocating donor organs. Should "social worth" count in allotting organs? Should we ignore the "dead-donor rule" and take organs from infants born lacking a brain? Should we permit people to sell one of their kidneys? Should organs be removed from people who aren't yet brain dead? Can children become living donors? He also explores the promises and perils of transplanting animal organs into people, and the promise that stem-cell engineering will permit physicians to repair damaged organs or replace them with new copies.

Advances in medical technology force us to struggle with new and often gut-wrenching decisions. How do we know when someone is dead and not just in a coma? Should a convicted felon qualify for a new heart? In The Woman Who Decided to Die, novelist and medical ethicist Ronald Munson takes readers to the very edges of medicine, where treatments fail and where people must cope with helplessness, mortality, and doubt. Using personal narratives that place us right next to doctors, patients, and care givers as they make decisions, Munson explores ten riveting case-based stories, told with a writer's eye for illuminating detail. These include a young woman with terminal leukemia more worried about her family than herself, a stepfather asked to donate a liver segment to his stepson, a student who believes she is being controlled by invisible Agents, and a psychiatrist-patient who prizes his autonomy until the end. Raising fundamental questions about human relationships, this is an essential book about the very nature of life and death.