Why We Need These Stories

The story of Jean Hilliard has been told and retold for more than four decades for reasons that go beyond its medical significance.

It is a story that speaks to something deep in the human relationship to survival, to the limits of the possible, and to the mystery of the body.

We are, as a species, intensely interested in the question of what we can survive.

This interest is not purely abstract — it is connected to the fundamental drive for self-preservation that is built into every biological organism.