Medical anthropologist Caroline Tait, on transplant medicine

"Western medicine can give you the heart of another person, but no meaningful direction on how to lead a good life with that heart," said Dr. Caroline Tait. That's the dilemma many Indigenous people face, as disproportionately early deaths and chronic disease boost the need for organ transplants. "Our whole public education if you look at it, is all about convincing people to sign their donor cards," said Tait, a medical anthropologist and psychiatry professor at the University of Saskatchewan. "We really don’t do any public health education at all around being a recipient.” Tait serves as co-lead of Canada's Network Environments for Indigenous Health Research, and research lead for the First Nations and Metis Organ Donation and Transplantation Network. Through an indigenous lens, she and fellow think tank members tackle ethical and philosophical questions around transplant medicine. "Indigenous people are very pragmatic and sometimes people forget that,” Tait said. "It's okay for us to change our minds." In this episode, Tait discusses the role of blood memory, why the 'wall' of anonymity between donor families and recipients is problematic, and ethical dilemmas raised by Indigenous elders, surgeons and patients with lived experience. "People are messy," said Tait. "They aren’t entirely sure how they feel about it. If they look at it from different vantage points, they may decide to do things differently.”