Transplantation and Alternative Worlds: Speculation in Doctors' Life Writing

Even though organ transplantation has turned into a repeatable and comparatively reliable practice, it still presents ample cause for speculation. In fact, various works of speculative fiction explore the practice in relation to the future. Yet, as this article suggests, speculation about transplantation does not only occur within the pages of fictional works but also impacts the life writing of medical professionals. This article engages specifically with the life writing of transplant surgeons: Thomas Starzl's The Puzzle People: Memoirs of a Transplant Surgeon (1992), Kathy E. Magliato's Heart Matters: A Memoir of a Female Heart Surgeon (2010), and Breathless: A Transplant Surgeon's Journal by Thomas R. J. Todd (2007). By focusing on two distinct forms of speculation – the employment of elements from speculative fiction and the pervasiveness of the question "What if …?" – this article emphasizes the underlying but often overlooked significance of speculation in medical contexts.