Leading medical ethicists, theologists, lawyers, transplant surgeons and physicians discuss 5 major ethical topics concerning the transplantation of human organs.
Leading medical ethicists, theologists, lawyers, transplant surgeons and physicians discuss 5 major ethical topics concerning the transplantation of human organs.
Organ transplantation has been one of the miracles of modern-day medicine but, in addition to presenting enormous technical and clinical challenges, it throws up major ethical and legal issues principally from the perspective of the donor. Evolving capabilities in the spheres of both organ and tissue transplantation, coupled with rapidly-escalating demand, assert consistent and critical pressure on our ethical and legal principles and frameworks, including the expansion of the potential donor pool beyond the conventional categories of donor. This volume brings together seminal papers analyzing such matters in the context of an ever-increasingly important area of clinical practice.
At the brink of the third millennium organ transplanta mati on how, in the case of shortage, a fair allocation of tion will become routine and the results will be so ex the scarce organs can be achieved. This is a very cellent that every patient in need of a transplant timely subject that continues to be discussed between deserves to be transplanted. How to provide every doctors and between laymen. patient with his or her organ and how to guarantee This book serves the needs of several groups of that the organ is in a superb condition? That is the specialists working with transplant patients. Firstly, the challenge for all of us privileged to work in this doctors who are directly involved in the care of the magnificent field of medicine. multi-organ donor, and who have to collaborate to do In this book, an international team of experts has the best for their recipients. Heart surgeons might like laid down their intellectual knowledge on the process to learn from liver surgeons and vice versa. Secondly, that precedes successful transplantation: Procurement, the paramedical specialist who is involved in the treat Preservation and Allocation. In four sections important ment of transplant patients and their families will find aspects of this preamble of the actual transplantation in this book many answers to questions. Students can are dealt with. also use it as a source for general information.
It is like a fairy story! Or at least a beautiful epic, a truly significant page in the history of medicine, a staggering scene in which several actors come into play, both fundamentalists and clinical practitioners, eager to place all these new developments at the disposal of those suffering from ill health. Everyone is passionate about their work, be it providing new knowledge or perfecting new therapeutic methods. Man has always been fascinated by the possibility of replacing a damaged organ with a healthy one. Several attempts have been made over the centuries, and some miracles have been reported, such as those of Saint Damien and Saint Come as illustrated by Fra Angelico. The modern saga, however, started more modestly on the mouse. It is on the mouse that the first tissue group was discovered; yet the study of human tissue groups could only be carried out on a human. One human must be subjected to the thousands of tests that have enabled us to unravel the extraordinary complexity of the HLA system.
This book, the proceedings of the 32nd International Conference on Transplantation and Clinical Immunology, held in Lyon, France, on May 25-26, 2000, addresses novel issues in terms of changing indications for transplantation in the management of organ failure, whether humans will remain the only source for organ procurement, prospects for engineering in organ replacement, and whether transplantation will remain the most appropriate approach to organ failure. Some promising treatments are approached, such as enzymic and biochemical replacement, gene therapy, tolerance induction, stem cell transplantation, and xenotransplantation. In addition to the constant improvement in conservative management of organ failure in general, ongoing research in selected fields is reported in the proceedings, such as liver transplantation vs artificial liver, novel dialysis strategies vs evolving immunosuppression in kidney transplantation, islets transplantation and external implantable insulin pumps vs pancreas transplantation in diabetic patients, circulatory assistance and intramyocardial myoblast injection vs heart transplantation. Pivotal experience in selected emerging transplantations is included, that is, small bowel, limb, skin and neuronal transplantation. Such fascinating perspectives raise medical, economical, and ethical problems which are discussed in this book.
Living donor kidney (LDK) transplantation has become the definitive approach to the treatment of end-stage renal failure, providing a better quality of life and the best opportunity for survival when compared with dialysis or transplantation from a deceased donor. A timely compendium of the modern day practice of LDK transplantation from a group of
The Blackwell Guide to Medical Ethics is a guide to the complex literature written on the increasingly dense topic of ethics in relation to the new technologies of medicine. Examines the key ethical issues and debates which have resulted from the rapid advances in biomedical technology Brings together the leading scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including philosophy, medicine, theology and law, to discuss these issues Tackles such topics as ending life, patient choice, selling body parts, resourcing and confidentiality Organized with a coherent structure that differentiates between the decisions of individuals and those of social policy.