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‘Confessions of a Good Samaritan’ Review: Penny Lane Delivers a Documentary Essay on Altruism and Its Discontents
‘Confessions of a Good Samaritan’ explores the science, history and ethics of organ donation in the context of the filmmaker's kidney donation.
Despite being a tad too long and a trifle repetitive, the documentary essay “ Confessions of a Good Samaritan ” from American helmer Penny Lane is a thought-provoking personal investigation into a subject rarely examined: the nature of altruism. A non-directed kidney donation seemed like a thing that she could do that would require a fairly minimal amount of pain, suffering and risk from her, but would be life-saving for someone else, especially since America faces a desperate organ shortage. Bio-ethicist and psychiatrist Dr. Jacob Appel helps Lane understand the history of progress in kidney transplantation, which came rapidly after the discovery of cyclosporine, an immunosuppressive agent used to treat organ rejection post-transplant.
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