It is astounding to me, and achingly sad, that with eighty thousand people on the waiting list for donated hearts and livers and kidneys, with sixteen a day dying there on that list, that more then half of the people in the position H's family was in will say no, will choose to burn those organs or let them rot. We abide the surgeon's scalpel to save our own lives, out loved ones' lives, but not to save a stranger's life. H has no heart, but heartless is the last thing you'd call her.
books life medicine

About This Quote

About Mary Roach

Mary Roach was a contemporary American author. Mary Roach is an American author specializing in popular science and humor. She has published eight New York Times bestsellers: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2003), Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (2005), Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (2008), Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (2010), Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal (2013), Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War (2016), Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law (2021), and Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy (2025). Read more on Wikipedia →

Themes

  • Life — Reflections on the meaning, challenges, and beauty of life

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