Local Author Recounts True-Life "Medical Tourism"

Daniel Asa Rose, a Rowayton native, came to the Westport Public Library on Monday to talk about his new book, Larry's Kidney: Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China with My Black Sheep Cousin and His Mail-Order Bride, Skirting the Law to Get Him a Transplant  — and Save His Life.

The book, published last year by William Morrow, is a stranger-than-fiction account of Rose's trip to China two years ago with his younger cousin, Larry Feldman — who was suffering from late-stage kidney disease — as "medical tourists" in search of a kidney transplant.

The duo landed in Beijing without a game plan and not knowing it was illegal in China for doctors to perform transplant surgery for Westerners.

The account reads like fiction, with manic conversations mimicking Rose's own speech, detailing the improbable sequence of events that led to a successful kidney transplant 49 days after they entered the country — for the bargain price of $32,000 (plus a $10,000 tab for post-surgery anti-rejection therapy). That's about eight times less than such a procedure would cost in the United States.

Feldman was told there was a minimum seven-year wait for the surgery in the U.S., with 75,000 people ahead of him.

The circumstances of the kidney donation are less sanguine: Rose and Feldman were told the donor was an imprisoned 31- year-old who'd been convicted of the triple murder of a mother, her father and her baby.

"Bad-bad criminal," the surgeon, Dr. X (the names of people and places are changed to protect identities), told the two in his plush office in a city eight hours' drive from Beijing prior to the transplant. "Very bad man! I would kill him hundred times!" 

The "donor" was to be executed with medications that left him brain-dead but preserved his organs for immediate transplant, they were told two weeks ahead of time.

"It's the equivalent of seeing a baby calf frolicking in a field and realizing it's this evening's veal piccata," Rose writes in his sardonic, humor-driven style.

Despite what they were told, Rose harbored doubts that the donor might have been one of thousands of political prisoners put to death by China's corrupt regime.

"This is morally a very murky area," Rose told his 30 listeners at the library. 

Rose uses talks about the book, such as at the Westport Library, as a platform to change attitudes and customs of organ donations.

He'd like the U.S. to follow the lead of Spain, which presumes that a deceased person wished to donate organs at the time of death and places a burden on the decedent to rebut the presumption — the reverse of the American presumption against organ donation. Eighty percent of potential donors in Spain actually donate organs and there is no waiting list, Rose said.

As Rose wrote in an op-ed piece in The New York Times a year ago, "I'd love to see a bumper sticker that declares: 'Live Forever! (Or at least parts of you.) Donate your organs!"

A simple alternative espoused tongue-in-cheek by Feldman would be to make motorcycle helmets optional. Rose also promotes developing better mechanical organs and hurried-up stem cell research that will lead to growing kidneys.

Rose's talk took on a serendipitous personal element when two of his biggest fans – his former Brien McMahon High School English teachers – showed up for his talk.

In the case of Linda Forcellina, Rose had not seen her since he graduated in 1967.

Maryjane Pacifico attended a book reading Rose gave in Darien five years ago.

The two retired teachers keep in touch and coordinated their attendance at Monday's talk. Rose recognized them without difficulty.

"You offered a standard of excellence that was a real gift and were responsible in no small measure for the fact that I am a writer," Rose said in impromptu remarks, dedicating the talk to them. "You informed my sensibilities for my whole life."

"You set me on a writing gig," Rose said, adding that it would have been helpful if his teachers had informed him that a writing career might not be economically very rewarding.

"It's been touch and go," said Rose, who has won numerous literary prizes for his fiction. He is also the author of a memoir, Hiding Places: A Father and His Sons Retrace Their Family's Escape from the Holocaust.

Rose, quick-witted, frequently interrupted himself to address remarks to his former teachers.

Reading the passage from his book "[Larry had been reduced to] a collection of chicken bones held together with a  rubber band," he shot a glance toward his former teachers and asked meekly, "Is that OK?" before saying "This is such a thrill to have my teachers here."

Forcellina and Pacifico lingered after the lecture to have their copies of the book autographed and to share 43-year-old memories with their former student.

"May I call you Jane?" Rose asked Pacifico as he autographed her copy of his book.

"We had so much respect for you," Rose declared. "You taught us a little bit of irreverence, a little bit of sass."

For their part, the teachers  told Rose they were nominating him to be added to the school's Hall of Honor, a space reserved for illustrious graduates.

"We'll send him the application papers and I think he'll make it," Forcellina said  with pride. "I'm on the committee."