This book had a long genesis. I presented parts of it as talks at Yale University at a meeting of the World Transhumanist Association, at talks to the Neurobiology Department at Northwestern University, at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, GA, in Lausanne, Switzerland, in the Distinguished Anniversary lecture at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil, as the Henry Smits Lecture at Truman State University in Kirksville, MO, and as a keynote speaker in 2008 for the Mississippi Philosophical Association. I gave the first version of this talk to the University Honors Program at UAB.
I thank the best man at my wedding, Alfred Garwood, whom I first met in graduate school nearly forty years ago and who is still a good friend, for many conversations and for his careful, sympathetic comments on this book. His thoughtful entering into this manuscript with his whole mind and heart powerfully changed it for the better. My mother, Louise Pence, read several versions of this book and always supported it, even if she did persistently keep asking when it was ever going to appear.
Writing is a lonely business. Through this business, the physician-writer Abraham Verghese has been a comforting, supportive voice, and I am in his debt in many ways.
In the summer of 2008, I had four able research assistants, all members of the Early Medical School Acceptance Program at UAB: Anand Bosmia, Christina Ho, Jennifer Ghandhi, and Khushboo Jhala. They tracked down articles and references, helped proofread and edit the book, and helped sustain me in the writing of it. As usual, my students gave me more than I gave them. Mrs. Minnie Randle, who was named employee-of-the-month at UAB that same summer of 2008, deserves that honor and more, in part for all her help in writing this book and with other projects.
Later in 2008, medical student Freedom Jackson was my able research assistant in a Special Topics course. Freedom’s prior decade of experience in a famous Birmingham law firm proved especially valuable to me.
In the summer of 2010, EMSAP students Allen Young, Michelle Chang, and Rachael Rosales helped on this book, serving as my summer interns, and subjecting my own writing to their rigorous proofing for sense, grammar, and typos. In spring 2012, my EMSAP students Amanda Allredge and Brynna Paulukaitis proofed the manuscript, discovering numerous small errors and really improving the flow of the material. Never has a professor had better assistants, and I am grateful for their persistent efforts.
In 2011, Dennis Watts—retired from the Department of Medicine at UAB—and some of his family kindly read a version of this manuscript and offered great comments. I am in their debt. My retired colleague, G. Lynn Stephens, read my chapter on professional athletes and steroids and corrected several errors of fact. Professors Tollefsbol and Bamman helped too.
UAB prides itself on being an interdisciplinary research university where interactions occur. Sometimes this is propaganda, sometimes mere hope, but in my case, it has been a dream. No philosopher or bioethicist has profited more than I from hearing talks in other fields and by scientists far afield from philosophy. Even basic lectures in our medical school on seemingly unrelated topics later bore fruit in this book. You never know when a fact will touch a concept.