Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death

Margaret Lock

University of California Press, $24.95/£17.95, pp 429

ISBN 0 529 22814 6

Rating:

Perhaps most British doctors feel that the subject of brain death is complete. Surely Christopher Pallis and his colleagues did a good job 15 years ago in defining the clinical criteria for diagnosing brain stem death (Medico-Legal Journal 1987;2:84-104). These have proved well defined and robust in practice. British procedures for obtaining organs and tissues from donors are careful and dignified. Transplantation is necessarily a good thing. We sympathise with relatives of the tragically dead and their predicament in contemplating organ harvesting from the loved one. …