A Matter of Life and Death: the back story
Sue Armstrong, author of A Matter of Life and Death, shares with us her reasons for writing her book on pathology.
In 1999 a commission of enquiry was set up to investigate the removal and retention of children’s organs following postmortem at Liverpool’s Alder Hey hospital. When the enquiry report came out in 2001 it caused a storm of outrage in the general public, fanned by the media which dubbed pathologists “doctors of death”. Coming from a medical family, I knew this demonisation was unfair and damaging: pathologists play a critical, but hidden, role in all our lives. I put the idea to the BBC of a radio feature looking at what kind of people go into pathology and what they actually do. It was readily accepted and I was asked for a two-part series for Radio 4 that was broadcast at prime-time in the evening science slot. The first programme allowed pathologists simply to talk about themselves and their work. The second focussed on a patient with breast cancer, examining the role played by pathologists in the management of her case, and following them into the lab where they were studying breast tissue from surgery.
Making the programmes was fascinating: this is a profession that demands engagement with some of the most profound issues of living and dying and I came away from interviews thoroughly stimulated and inspired. Here was a story worth telling. I was subsequently approached by the Pathological Society about the possibility of writing a book, and I suggested one that took a similar approach to the radio broadcasts – conversations with pathologists that explored the homes they grew up in, when and how their interest in pathology was kindled, who have been their mentors, heroes, role models, and what their working lives entail.
Why should a book that deals essentially with the “science of medicine” appeal to a general audience? One day when I was working on the radio programmes in London, I passed the venue of the Body Worlds exhibition – the controversial show put on by German anatomist Gunther von Hagens, which gives visitors a tour of the human body preserved by ‘plastination’ and presented in life-like and very personal ways. A few angry protesters outside had failed to deter attendance, and visitors were queuing round the block. Bodies – how they work and what can go wrong with them – are quite simply fascinating to us all.
