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75 books match the query 'Death & Dying' and 4 start with l

cover of Last Best Gifts: Altruism and the Market for Human Blood and Organs

Last Best Gifts

Altruism and the Market for Human Blood and Organs

Kieran Healy

University of Chicago Press, 2006

More than any other altruistic gesture, blood and organ donation exemplifies the true spirit of self-sacrifice. Donors literally give of themselves for no reward so that the life of an individual—often anonymous—may be spared. But as the demand for blood and organs has grown, the value of a system that depends solely on gifts has been called into question, and the possibility has surfaced that donors might be supplemented or replaced by paid suppliers.
 
Last Best Gifts offers a fresh perspective on this ethical dilemma by examining the social organization of blood and organ donation in Europe and the United States. Gifts of blood and organs are not given everywhere in the same way or to the same extent—contrasts that allow Kieran Healy to uncover the pivotal role that institutions play in fashioning the contexts for donations. Procurement organizations, he shows, sustain altruism by providing opportunities to give and by producing public accounts of what giving means. In the end, Healy suggests, successful systems rest on the fairness of the exchange, rather than the purity of a donor’s altruism or the size of a financial incentive.



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cover of Late Derrida, Volume 106

Late Derrida, Volume 106

Ian Balfour , ed.

Duke University Press, 0

This special issue of SAQ commemorates and interrogates—with varying measures of appreciation and critique—the late work of the philosopher Jacques Derrida. Resisting simple memorialization of Derrida since his death in 2004, this collection contends that the late work of this prolific theorist remains to be better understood. The contributors explore the peculiar intensity—a combined sense of both patience and urgency—that characterizes Derrida’s late writing, suggestive, among other things, of his preoccupation with mortality, of time running out, and of so many pressing things to be done.

The essays address a wide array of Derrida’s concerns: human rights, justice, religion, the performative, “the gift of death,” mourning, and sovereignty. They often put Derrida’s texts in conjunction with the works of others—Wordsworth, Agamben, Schelling, and Benjamin, to name a few—that resonate with and on occasion resist Derrida’s own thinking and writing. One essay offers a reading of Wordsworth’s elegy “Distressful gift!” as a dialogue with questions posed by Derrida, using as its frame the kind of nonnormative mourning that Derrida advocated, together with a haunting analysis of the character of survival. Other essays look at Derrida’s theory of performativity as advanced in his late works, continuing his emphasis on the power of language, and in general they emulate his vigilance in attending to force and violence everywhere.

Contributors. Ian Balfour, David L. Clark, Mary Jacobus, David E. Johnson, David Lloyd, J. Hillis Miller, Marc Redfield, Rei Terada, Elisabeth Weber


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cover of Lessons in Mortality: Doctors and Patients Struggling Together

Lessons in Mortality

Doctors and Patients Struggling Together

Allen B. Weisse, M.D.

University of Missouri Press, 2006

It doesn’t take a trip to the doctor to know that the bond between physicians and patients isn’t what it used to be. Specialization, rising costs, managed care, the insurance industry, the shadow of litigation—so many factors have changed what was once a traditional relationship grounded in respect and caring. 
            In light of the altered climate in health care, this thoughtful book deals with the way that today’s doctors and patients view themselves and one another. Allen Weisse has observed the changing medical scene during half a century of treating patients and training future physicians, and he writes frankly here about how doctors and patients have come to deal with illness in the twenty-first century. 
Weisse first recalls his own brush with death as a young man diagnosed with testicular cancer—a time when one thinks of God and Death and little else. He then shares true stories of how different people have dealt with cancer, heart disease, stroke, infectious disease, AIDS, and other dire diagnoses—narratives enhanced by professional savvy and enriched by the kind of empathy that the survivor of such a calamity can provide.
Drawing from a storehouse of experiences shared by colleagues, patients, and friends, Weisse writes with passion, conviction, and clarity to encourage a renewal of the openness and trust that seem to be lacking in today’s doctor-patient relationships. These are accounts both uplifting and disturbing—some sad, others tinged with humor—intended to make doctors and patients alike come to a fuller realization that we are all together in this delicate but crucial business of staying alive.
            While not quite foreseeing a return to the Norman Rockwell image of the family physician, Weisse urges the kind of care and compassion that patients often feel is lacking from their doctors, and he reassures victims of seemingly hopeless conditions that, despite the obstacles they often face, there are still health care professionals who truly have their patients’ welfare foremost in mind. Lessons in Mortality is just what the doctor ordered for a health care system in crisis: an honest look at the medical profession that encourages greater understanding on the part of both physicians and patients, reminding us that what we most need is one another.
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cover of Life and Death in Central Apulia: Burial Practices and Italic Communities Between the Sixth and Third Centuries BCE

Life and Death in Central Apulia

Burial Practices and Italic Communities Between the Sixth and Third Centuries BCE

Bice Peruzzi

University of Wisconsin Press, 2027

Long overshadowed in ancient historiography, the Peucetians of Central Apulia are brought into focus for the first time in Life and Death in Central Apulia. Carefully examining Peucetian burial assemblages, archaeologist Bice Peruzzi traces a social history of this Italic people from the sixth to the third centuries BCE. She demonstrates that, far from being passive recipients of the more “advanced” cultures of their Greek or Roman neighbors, the Peucetians made nuanced, deliberate, and informed choices in the preparation and treatment of their dead, reflecting the complexities of individual, social, and cultural identities of the deceased. This indicates a mature culture, in full interaction with other Mediterranean peoples, and is visible and worthy of scholarly attention in its own right. This detailed study offers a fresh look at ancient Italy beyond the historiographic dominance of Greece and Rome and represents the recovery of one thread of a vibrant, ancient Mediterranean cultural tapestry.

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