Samuel Morris Brown (born 1972) is a medical researcher and physician, and he was the assistant professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine and an associate in the division of medical ethics and humanities at the University of Utah when this was written. He is the attending physician in the Shock Trauma Intensive Care Unit at Intermountain Medical Center and investigates hidden rhythms in heart function during life-threatening infection. In his limited free time, Samuel studies and writes about the human and cultural meanings of kinship, embodiment, illness, and mortality.