About the Author

MYLES EDWIN LEE is a board-certified cardiothoracic surgeon who has practiced in Los Angeles, California, for thirty-two years. He has authored numerous scientific abstracts, articles, and book chapters in his field, including a textbook of complications in cardiac surgery. Dr. Lee is a senior member of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery. The Donation is his first novel.

About my latest book

THE DONATION (A Novel)

The Donation is a medical thriller that dramatizes the shortage of donors for organ transplantation. The premise of The Donation is that if prisoners on death row have a choice of a last meal, why can they not choose their method of execution? And what if that choice of execution became organ donation?

The United States Supreme Court has recently ruled that lethal injection as a means of capital punishment does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment as defined by the eighth amendment to the Constitution, despite widespread  criticism as to its administration by non-medical personnel. The Donation suggests that lethal injection become an anesthetic and that execution become an operation to benefit those in need of replacement organs. 

Set in Los Angeles , The Donation luxuriates in controversy and ethical dilemmas. The Donation portrays an executioner as a redeemer and physicians, knowingly and unknowingly in violation of the Hippocratic oath and the guidelines of the American Medical Association, as executioners. In the process, a celebrity transplant recipient, staggered to learn that the sanctity of his body has been savaged by his donor, falls victim to a post-operative psychosis that endangers his life.

The Donation concludes with the startling and controversial proposal that organ donation become a means of execution available to prisoners on death row. In a single stroke, lethal injection becomes anesthesia administered by professionals in a controlled setting; the condemned realizes a sense of redemption for their crimes against society; and the pool of organs available for transplantation increases.

As the story evolves, the result is a collision of medical ethics and hospital politics with the criminal justice system. These conflicts create the potential to erode the public's trust in its caregivers, but the potential also exists that organ donation, approved by the states as a means of execution, may benefit the public welfare in a tangible and meaningful way.

A surprise ending transforms the tragedy of one man's grief into an affirmation of life.