This book addresses ethical conflicts arising from saving the lives of patients who need a transplant while treating living and dead donors, organ sellers, animals, and embryos with proper moral regard. Our challenge is to develop a better world in the light of debatable values and uncertain consequences.
This book addresses ethical conflicts arising from saving the lives of patients who need a transplant while treating living and dead donors, organ sellers, animals, and embryos with proper moral regard. Our challenge is to develop a better world in the light of debatable values and uncertain consequences.
Rates of organ donation lag far behind the increasing need. At the start of 2006, more than 90,000 people were waiting to receive a solid organ (kidney, liver, lung, pancreas, heart, or intestine). Organ Donation examines a wide range of proposals to increase organ donation, including policies that presume consent for donation as well as the use of financial incentives such as direct payments, coverage of funeral expenses, and charitable contributions. This book urges federal agencies, nonprofit groups, and others to boost opportunities for people to record their decisions to donate, strengthen efforts to educate the public about the benefits of organ donation, and continue to improve donation systems. Organ Donation also supports initiatives to increase donations from people whose deaths are the result of irreversible cardiac failure. This book emphasizes that all members of society have a stake in an adequate supply of organs for patients in need, because each individual is a potential recipient as well as a potential donor.
Transplantation is a medically successful and cost-effective way to treat people whose organs have failed--but not enough organs are available to meet demand. T. M. Wilkinson explores the major ethical problems raised by policies for acquiring organs. Key topics include the rights of the dead, the role of the family, and the sale of organs.
These questions and others are thoughtfully probed in this collection of essays, which features articles from theologians, philosophers, physicians, biomedical ethicists, and an attorney.
With over 25,000 American receiving transplants annually, this is a timely and dramatic account of organ transplants and the ethical and social issues they force society to confront.
This book challenges conventional medical ethics by exposing the inconsistency between the reality of end-of-life practices and established ethical justifications of them.
Originally published in 1990, this study of the moral problems bound up with transplant therapy addresses a finely balanced distinction between ethical issues relating to its experimental nature on the one hand and those which arise when transplantation is routine on the other. Among the issues examined are proposals for routine cadaveric harvesting, criteria for organ and tissue procurement from living donors, foetuses, non-human animals and current ethical problems with artificial implants. Written as a contribution to practical philosophy, this book will interest ethicists and health care professionals.
Organ transplantation raises singularly difficult ethical and legal issues in its requirement for donated organs. Strategies to facilitate supply in the face of increasing demand must be ethically sound and subject to an appropriate and effective regulatory framework. Professor David Price reviews the ethical principles and positions underpinning such law and policies, probing for coherence, consistency and justification. The book incorporates a comprehensive analysis of existing laws and policies governing transplantation practices around the world. It examines the meaning of death, cadaver organ procurement policies, use of living donors, trading in human organs, experimental transplant procedures and xenotransplantation. Drawing upon a wide range of disciplinary and empirical materials Price explores the balance between the interests of donors, recipients, clinicians, and society, identifying the specific challenges of this subject and seeking to guide current practices and future developments in the context of cultural diversity and pluralistic societies.