Document Type
Article
Publication Date
6-1985
ISSN
1073-1105
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Language
en-US
Abstract
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.
Recommended Citation
George J. Annas,
The Dog and His Shadow: A Response to Overcast and Evans
,
in
13
Law, Medicine and Health Care
112
(1985).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/3517
