Life with Sudden Death : A Tale of Moral Hazard and Medical Misadventure

Michael Downing was three when his father died suddenly and inexplicably.

No autopsy was performed. The family diagnosis was God's will.As a boy in the Berkshires, Downing was rigorously trained as a spiritual athlete, but he couldn't exorcise his fondness for the wrong books and other boys.

He aimed for Harvard and escaped his inherited sense of identity� until one of his brothers died in 2003, suddenly and inexplicably.

Again, no autopsy was performed.Alarmed, Downing pursued a diagnosis and discovered he had inherited a mutant protein from his father, and that the first symptom would likely be his sudden death.Downing had a defibrillator hardwired to his heart.

Within weeks, he needed emergency surgery to extract the device and the life-threatening infection he got with it.

Three months later, he was reimplanted� only to read in his morning newspaper that the new electrical wires anchored to his heart were prone to failure.Life with Sudden Death explores a simple question: Who can you trust with your life?