This thought-provoking book ponders the far-reaching connections of organ transplantation to human experience. A collaboration among an exceptional group of scholars and physicians, 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 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, and 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.