Description
Book SynopsisA beautifully written and compelling memoir of a largely unexplored area of medicine: transplant surgery.
Leading transplant surgeon Dr Joshua Mezrich creates life from loss, moving organs from one body to another. In this intimate, profoundly moving work, he examines more than one hundred years of remarkable medical breakthroughs, connecting this fascinating history with the stories of his own patients.
Gripping and evocative, How Death Becomes Life takes us inside the operating room and presents the stark dilemmas that transplant surgeons must face daily: How much risk should a healthy person be allowed to take to save someone she loves? Should a patient suffering from alcoholism receive a healthy liver? The human story behind the most exceptional medicine of our time, Mezrich's riveting book is a poignant reminder that a life lost can also offer the hope of a new beginning.
Trade ReviewPart memoir and part historical account of the extraordinary pioneers who believed that people could be
repaired and revived as the sum of their working parts... Moving
* Financial Times *
An outstanding memoir by a transplant surgeon who combines an autobiography and operating room dramatics with an equally engrossing history of his profession... this [medical memoir] ranks near the top [of the genre], in a class that includes arguably the best, Henry Marsh's
Do No Harm * Kirkus Reviews *
Monumental and enthralling. * New York Journal of Books *
Fascinating... Compelling stories about an area of medicine shrouded in mystery. * Stephen Westaby *
A beautifully written insight into an extraordinary area of medicine and a fascinating career. Heartbreaking and life-affirming in equal measure, it has all the makings of a classic. * Dr Max Pemberton, columnist and author of Trust Me, I'm a (Junior) Doctor *
Table of Contents1: A Perfect Organ 2: Puzzle People 3: The Simple Beauty of the Kidney 4: Skin Harvest 5: Kidney Beans: Making Kidney Transplant a Reality 6: Open Heart: The Invention of Cardiopulmonary Bypass 7: Hearts on Fire: Making Heart Transplant a Reality 8: Sympathy for the Pancreas: Curing Diabetes 9: Prometheus Revisited: Liver Transplants and Thomas Starzl 10: Jason: The Secret Is to Live in the Present 11: Lisa and Herb: Should We Do Liver Transplants for Alcoholics? 12: Nate: The Selection Meeting, or Who Gets an Organ and Why? 13: Michaela: We Are All the Same on the Inside 14: As They Lay Dying 15: Healthy Donors: Do No Harm 16: Complications 17: Xenotransplantation: From One Species to Another 18: So, You Want to Be a Transplant Surgeon?
