The Ethics of Organ Transplantation ed. by Steven J. Jensen (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 487 investigations into the spiritual senses; on the other hand, “to use Balthasarian parlance: it is precisely through the spiritual senses that one performs the epistemologically central task of ‘seeing the form’” (258). So McInroy concludes that the intellectual aims of these two authors ought not to be overcontrasted, because “we see that Rahner is much less dictated by his philosophical influences than is often thought to be the case; and we also observe that Balthasar is more concerned with theological anthropology than is typically assumed” (258). In the final chapter, William Abraham introduces the contributions of analytic philosophers of religion to the epistemological issues involved in the doctrine of the spiritual senses, even though the analytic philosophers themselves do not employ the term ‘spiritual senses.’ He reviews the discussions carried out, over the last fifty years, by John Hick, Basil Mitchell, Richard Swinburne, Caroline Franks Davis, William Alston, and Alvin Plantinga. Abraham is right in maintaining that the contemporary philosophy of religion has much to offer to the understanding of religious perception (as I try to show in Transcendent Experiences: Phenomenology and Critique [2001]). To sum up: this is a collection of high-quality essays, in which arguments are clearly marshalled and well supported by texts. It is rounded out by a select bibliography, a general index, and an index of select biblical references. However, it does not offer a conclusion, leaving the readers with the task of elaborating their own appraisal of the spiritual senses. LOUIS ROY, O.P. Dominican University College Ottawa, Ontario The Ethics of Organ Transplantation. Edited by STEVEN J. JENSEN. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011. Pp. xxviii + 340. $24.95 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-8132-1874-8. According to the United Network for Organ Sharing (www.unos.org), which is the private, nonprofit organization that manages the organ procurement and transplant network under contract with the United States government, at the time of this writing (June 2012) there are 114,825 Americans waiting for an organ transplant. Sadly, many of these patients will die before they receive a suitable donation. Not surprisingly, governments, medical associations, and individuals have put forward a wide range of proposals to respond to this crisis, proposals that have raised numerous ethical and moral concerns. To consider and to evaluate these concerns, the Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, sponsored an interdisciplinary medical ethics conference to address the topicoforgan transplantation, 27-29 March 2009. The BOOK REVIEWS 488 proceedings of this conference have been published by The Catholic University of America Press as The Ethics of Organ Transplantation, a volume adeptly edited by Steven J. Jensen. The proceedings are composed of fourteen chapters authored by distinguished scholars working primarily fromwithin the Catholic moral tradition, divided into five sections. In this review, I will highlight the chapters that I find particularly stimulating and thought provoking. In part 1, four authors summarize and probe the contemporary debate over the validity of the neurological criteria—the brain-death criteria—for the diagnosis of death. Two essays are particularly striking. First, pediatric neurologist D. Alan Shewmon, who in many ways has singularly challenged the brain-death consensus, presents the clinical evidence that shows that brain-dead patients retain an organismal integrity that suggests that they are not yet dead (chap. 2). Most strikingly, Shewmon describes three extraordinary cases of long-term survival of brain-dead individuals with minimal medical assistance, certainly less medical assistance than most patients receive in intensive care units throughout the world. As he notes, the President’s Council of Bioethics, after reviewing the medical information,had to abandon the classical justification for the brain-death criterion—that the brain is the integrator of the body that maintains the organism-unity of the individual—and propose novel criteria for brain death, which in Shewmon’s view are also flawed. In response to Shewmon and other critics of the brain death criteria—and I count myself as one of them—Jason Eberl “defends the concept of integrative unity as supportive of the whole-brain standard by equating it with the Aristotelian-Thomistic concept of ‘substantial unity’” (chap. 3...