Readers will certainly not agree with Munson in all cases, but he does a service in raising the issues and pointing to the...
One man’s take on the art, science, and ethics of organ transplantation. Given the author’s other life as a thriller writer (Night Vision, 1995, etc.), it’s not too surprising that the take is often as melodramatic as the title.
The facts are mostly here, however, and textbook-writer Munson (Philosophy of Science and Medicine/Univ. of Missouri, St. Louis) provides a useful review of where we’ve been and what lies ahead. Remember Mickey Mantle’s liver transplant? Foil for Munson’s discussion of whether it’s right to give lifelong alcoholics—with liver cancer yet—a transplant, and whether the rich and famous get put at the top of the list. Baby Fae with the baboon heart? Basis for examination of xenotransplantation (cross-species transplants). And so with a consideration of the ethics of selling organs, touched off by the story of a woman who donated a kidney to finance her son’s bone-marrow transplant. Munson also supplies such future scenarios as entrepreneurs raising baboons for transplants, or all of us to growing replacement organs based on harvesting our own stem cells. Each of these chapters (as well as several on the issue of defining when death occurs) ends with the bioethicist taking a stand on what’s right or wrong. Munson concludes that the docs did the right thing in Mantle’s case, the wrong one in Baby Fae’s; he says it’s sometimes okay to sell organs and comments that xenotransplants may have more going for them than against (such as the risk of spreading animal viruses). Finally, he sees real hope for embryo and, to a lesser extent, adult stem-cell therapy, opposing the Catholic (and Bush administration) position that only existing embryo stem-cell lines should be available for research.
Readers will certainly not agree with Munson in all cases, but he does a service in raising the issues and pointing to the needs of an aging society in which health care is anything but equitable.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-19-513299-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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