Part 1, Patterns in therapeutic innovation: Transplantation:
Gift exchange and gatekeeping
Specialists in uncertainty: the problem of rejection
The experiment-therapy dilemma
The physician-investigator and his patients;
Part 2, The courage to fail ethos:
A sociological portrait of the transplant surgeon
The heart transplant moratorium
The case of the artificial heart;
Part 3, Patterns in therapeutic innovation: Dialysis:
"To give life": a study of Seattle's Hemodialysis Program
Patient selection and the right to die: problems facing Seattle's Kidney Center
Ernie Crowfeather;
Conclusions: the societal meaning of the Courage to Fail.