The writer and post-doctoral fellow Anita Slominska discusses her new book Other Endings: Organ Transplantation and the Burdens of Hope (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2026), with Joseph Planta.
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Other Endings: Organ Transplantation and the Burdens of Hope by Anita Slominska (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2026).
Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: Other Endings |
Text of the introduction by Joseph Planta:
I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver, British Columbia, at TheCommentary.ca.
There’s a fascinating and engaging book out now on organ donation, but other than statistics or research, which the book has, it also is the personal story of the author, and her sister Shauna Saunders who was listed for a liver transplant, the only curative treatment for her end-stage liver disease, but who died waiting for a donor organ in 2003 at the age of 29. Joining me now is Anita Slominska, who has written Other Endings: Organ Transplantation and the Burdens of Hope. It honours Shauna’s life by telling her story, and narrates the agonising wait for a liver, and the precipitous decline as none turned up. The book began as part of Anita’s post-graduate work in an interdisciplinary health studies program that researched organ donation. And it’s not just the statistics of how many organs are donated, but the ethics of organ donation, and the realities of how organs get donated. The fact that somebody has to die, or be dying, and often in gruesome circumstances, gets overlooked when we’re hearing of a “gift of life” or a “second chance” or even “rebirth” when a new organ is found. Anita looks at how often organ transplantation fails as well, and the reality that there are lots of people year after year who die waiting. It’s a compelling memoir; raw and intimate. Anita Slominska is a postdoctoral fellow at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre and the Institute of Health Sciences Education at McGill University. The book is published by McGill-Queen’s University Press. We spoke last week, with Anita joining me from Montreal. Please welcome to the Planta: On the Line program, Anita Slominska; Dr. Slominska, good morning.
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