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The Dog and His Shadow: A Response to Overcast and Evans

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

George J. Annas
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Extract

Aesop‘s Fable, “The Dog and the Shadow,” begins with a dog walking over a bridge with a piece of meat in his mouth. Looking down into the stream, he sees his shadow. Thinking it is a bigger dog, with a piece of meat twice the size of his own, the greedy dog decides to get it. Snarling, he opens his mouth to attack. At that moment the meat falls from his mouth, into the stream. The dog realizes his mistake, and sadly says to himself, “Grasp at the shadow and lose the substance.“

Drs. Overcast and Evans have not yet realized their mistake, but this response may help them see that what they characterize as their “strong exception” to “procedural and substantive” points made by the Massachusetts Task Force on Organ Transplantation and the “major shortcomings” they purport to identify really involve insubstantial “shadows.” Their “appraisal” indicates no disagreement of substance with any of the Task Force's policy recommendations. and their tangential quibbles shrink when their content and context is understood.

Type
Article
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , June 1985 , pp. 112 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1985

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References

Annas, G.J., Regulating Heart and Liver Transplants in Massachusetts: An Overview of the Report of the Task Force on Organ Transplantation, Law, Medicine & Health Care 13(1):4–7 (February 1985) (hereinafter referred to as Regulating Transplants].Google ScholarPubMed
Report of the Massachusetts Task Force on Organ Transplantation, Law, Medicine & Health Care 13(1):8, 10 (February 1985) [hereinafter referred to as Task Force Report].Google Scholar
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