Pass the Eye

The Man With Five Kidneys ...

The headline is my clever way of introducing one of the better New Yorker stories I've read in a while.

(That's more an indictment of my inability to keep up with their output than a crack at their editorial chops.)

Larissa MacFarquhar has an excellent piece on the moral and emotional issues surrounding kidney transplants. With the introduction of a new site that allows donors to choose their recipients based on recipient profiles, a new dynamic is emerging -- and it's often tense and angst-ridden.

That aside, there are plenty of interesting tidbits that are the hallmark of a great New Yorker story.

During a kidney transplant, it's not required that a nonfunctioning kidney be removed. As a result, a person who's had multiple kidney transplants may have more than three kidneys. That is, assuming they were lucky enough to find multiple kidneys.

Kidneys are flushed free of blood prior to transport to their new donor. The blood inside would cause them to rapidly deteriorate. The scene in the story describing a transplant operation is fascinating -- the moment the kidney is attached to the donor's artery is incredible.

There's more, including a brief -- but illuminating and heartbreaking -- description of dialysis, but I'll leave the other gems unearthed so you'll read the story.

Why You Should Read 'The New Yorker' This Week

I can't remember the last time I urged somebody to pick up an issue of The New Yorker. Even though I've been a long-time subscriber, the "must-read" issues seem few and far between these days.

Then the March 31st issue showed up, and swimming through the flood of "blow-ins" -- those ignoring subscription postcards that Conde Nast is so fond of -- suddenly seems worthwhile. There's a long, in-depth profile from the formidable John Cassidy of former Merrill Lynch head Stan O'Neal; a nimble piece on what really motivates the Dalai Lama (with some surprising wisdom from Hannah Arendt); and a dash of quirk from the marketing "genius" behind Pom, the Franklin Mint, and Teleflora -- yes, they're all the same person.

There's also a piece on how digital is continuing to hurt the profit margins of newspapers, which I read with interest. Not a lot of new information here, but I did find the context (the Walter Lippman vs. John Dewey debate over the goals of the media, for instance) interesting.

I even got the little cartoon interstitials in the issue. So either the Omega-3s are kicking in, or the editors at The New Yorker are working a little harder to court me -- one of the most endangered species: The magazine subscriber.