Distributing Organs

The first organ donation was successfully performed in 1954 (Major). Since then, institutions have set up many regulations and processes that have saved many lives by allowing people to donate their organs, but government policies in the United States have set up laws that prevent individuals to make choices about their own bodies. The National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA) is a regulation that prevents those who prefer to profit from their donation. The purpose of the act was to, “prohibit the assignment of a monetary value to an organ for transplantation, thus preventing commercialization and ensuring some level of equity in access to organs” (Delmonico). “Punishment includes fines up to $50 000 and 5 years in prison” (Friedman). The only country that legalizes organs to be bought and sold is Iran. The Iranian government recognized the overwhelming increasing of resources needed for dialysis as more and more people were becoming ill, so the government decided to make it legal to pay citizens to have transplants mainly in the UK (Major). When a person is in need of an organ, doctors assess whether or not that person is eligible for a transplant (Bernard). Once they have been approved, the patient will be referred by the doctor to a transplant center where they evaluate the patient’s physical and mental health as well as the patient’s social support to clear the requirements for being considered a viable candidate for an organ transplant, and finding the right donor is all

The decision to determine who gets an organ is something that cannot be taken lightly. If proper protocol is not followed, issues such as biasness and judging people based on factors like socioeconomic status may be used to determine this dilemma. For this reason, organ transplantation is overseen by government regulators. The Division of Transplantation (DoT), which falls under the US Department of Health and Human Services, oversees this process. Organs are allocated according to strict rules that take into account physical matching, tissue and blood type matching, medical criteria, waiting time, severity of illness. The allocation system is blind to name, race, sex and wealth. The allocation rules have been developed over many years of deliberation by physicians and other transplant professionals, transplant candidates and recipients, donor families, and representatives of the federal government. (CITE ThIs) Removing these variables and following protocol causes the medical professional to make a decision on fairness rather than feelings, biasness, and possibly corruption such as bribery.

Liver Allocation is an ethical dilemma for healthcare providers and patients. An article published in the American Journal of Critical-Care Nurses entitled “The Power of The Liver Transplant Waiting List: A Case Presentation” discusses a 60 year old woman with cirrhosis was placed on the liver transplant list under the category “status 7”. Status 7 is an inactive state and are considered unsuitable to receive transplant surgery. Liver allocation is done by an organization called the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), and the way they rank patients to receive a transplant is by a Model End Staged Liver Disease (MELD). It is scored from 6 to 40, and those with a high scores are the ones to receive a liver transplant (Hansen, Yan, and Rosenkranz,

Organ donations not only save lives but also money and time. If organ donations became prevalent the organ recipient would no longer need dialysis. Since there is no need for dialysis the cost to use the machine would lessen; this means that the cost of equipment would decrease, saving the hospital and insurance company’s money. More lives would be saved as well as benefit from those that no longer need an organ. In the book titled “Elements of Bioethics” adult organ transplants are only that have medical insurance. If organs are taken from recently deceased the cost for those that has no medical coverage was lessen. The process of organ transplantation is life changing and time is crucial. With shorter waiting time it would put ease on the person’s heart to know that this lifesaving event would happen sooner rather than later. In addition, when the organ is taken from the recently deceased the risk would be eliminated from

Since the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 prevents a monetary price from being placed on a donated organ, effective allocation mechanisms must be utilized. Allocation mechanisms must be accessed because the shortage of supply compared to the demand. In any market, allocation mechanisms rely on many factors but some include friendships, “under the table” payments, predicted profit, and personal biases.

The organs should not be accepted under these conditions because they are only benefiting Caucasians. With the restrictions the family put on the organs it goes against a few principles of bioethics, such as equality and fairness. Equality is broken because the chances of receiving a donation are not equal. As well as for the principle of fairness, the rule that the family put on the organ donations makes it impossible for any other group of ethnicities besides Caucasians to receive a transplant. If the family were to place a restriction that the organs were to go

Organ transplantation is a term that most people are familiar with. When a person develops the need for a new organ either due to an accident or disease, they receive a transplant, right? No, that 's not always right. When a person needs a new organ, they usually face a long term struggle that they may never see the end of, at least while they are alive. The demand for transplant organs is a challenging problem that many people are working to solve. Countries all over the world face the organ shortage epidemic, and they all have different laws regarding what can be done to solve it. However, no country has been able to create a successful plan without causing moral and ethical dilemmas.

Everyone should have to go through the proper channels and be approved to be placed on the transplant list. Then, they should have to wait until it is their turn to receive the donated organ. The only time that someone should be moved up on the list is if their condition rapidly deteriorates over the course of a couple of days and it is absolutely medically necessary to give them the organ first. That would be the only acceptable way that I could see someone being moved up on the list and I have heard of this happening before.

The current system of acquiring an organ donation is through a wait-list called the allocation system, which was supposed to be resolute. However, there are a few exceptions to the wait list causing this entire system to become even more unfair. For instance, when an organ donor dies his or her organs are more likely to be given to family members on a wait-list rather than those who are actually next in line (Hanto). Wait-lists are meant to be fair because those put on the list first are supposed to get organs first, but how fair is that really? How badly one needs an organ for his or her survival should rank higher than how quickly he or she found about his or her physical defects. Another factor that should be taken into account when placing people onto a wait list is their age. It makes more sense to give younger people a chance at life than prolonging the life of someone who has already lived to a ripe old age, but most supporters of the allocation system will argue that all lives are worth the same, even though there are clear lines between who will benefit more from organ donations.

Every day, 20 people die because they are unable to receive a vital organ transplant that they need to survive. Some of these people are on organ donation lists and some of them are not. The poor and minorities are disproportionately represented among those who do not receive the organs they need. In the United States alone, nearly 116,000 people are on waiting lists for vital organ transplants. Another name is added to this list every 10 minutes. This paper will argue that organ donation should not be optional. Every person who dies, or enters an irreversible vegetative state with little or no brain function, should have his or her organs-more specifically, those among the organs that are suitable for donation-harvested. A single healthy donor who has died can save up to eight lives (American Transplant Foundation).

Innovative advances in the practice of medicine have increased the life span of the average American. This along with the growing population in the United States and has created a shortfall in the number of organs available for transplant today. The current system of allocation used to obtain organs for transplant faces difficulty because of two primary reasons according to Moon (2002). The two perceptions that stop potential organs donors are that the allocation criteria is unfair and favors certain members of society and/or that organs may be allocated to someone who has destroyed their organs by misuse (Moon, 2002). Many individuals decline to donate organs because anyone requiring an organ transplant is placed on a waiting list and it is possible that individuals who have destroyed their organs by their own actions or convicted criminals could receive donated organs before someone whose organs are failing through no fault of their own and positively contribute to society. When a celebrity or wealthy individual requires a transplant they are often viewed as "jumping" the waitlist but

In addition, surgeons have learned how to keep increasingly patients alive longer and how to make more people eligible for transplants. Still, there are shortage of organs donation. According to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), a non-profit, scientific and educational organization, organizes transplant registration. 3448 people died in 1995 because organs were not available for them in time. A third to a half of all people on waiting lists die before an organ can be found for them. This shortage raises several difficult ethical problems. How should the limited supply of organs be distributed? Should donors be encouraged to donate by the use of financial incentives? Opponents of the sale of organs point out that the inevitable result will be further exploitation of poor people by the

Unfortunately, the transplant wait‐list has increased far more quickly than the supply of deceased‐donor kidneys” (Curtis). This increase of older patients in need of kidneys leads to medial professionals making independent utilitarian judgements on who deserves them most. The nation's organ-transplant network is considering giving younger, healthier people preference over older, sicker patients for the best kidneys. “Instead of giving priority primarily to patients who have been on the waiting list longest, the new rules would match recipients and organs to a greater extent based on factors such as age and health to try to maximize the number of years provided by each kidney - the most sought-after organ for transplants” (Stein). These new rules

Organ transplants are one of the most dangerous procedures in modern medicine, many things have been done to make them safer for the patient but there are still a lot of risks being taken. With organs in short supply and because of the risk factor many people are not allowed to have organ transplants and people have been fighting back against their doctors because doctors have to choose whether to grant or deny an organ transplant. Many people do not believe that doctors should be able to deny a transplant to a patient if they have been on the waiting list and now have an organ available but without doctors making these important decisions more problems are caused. With the inherent risk of transplants and with the miniscule amount of available organs and donors, doctors should be allowed to make the decision of whether a patient receives a transplant because of their experience with the procedure, their knowledge of whether a patient will be able to take care of themselves after and their ideas of what patients would not survive the procedure. With all of the knowledge and experience a doctor has they should be allowed to make the decision of whether someone should receive a transplant or other surgery. This is a decision between life and death and if one transplant is not successful it takes away the opportunity of a successful transplant from another person, it only makes sense to allow doctors to make the decision between two patients waiting for the same transplant and

In February 2003, 17-year-old Jesica Santillan received a heart-lung transplant at Duke University Hospital that went badly awry because, by mistake, doctors used donor organs from a patient with a different blood type. The botched operation and subsequent unsuccessful retransplant opened a discussion in the media, in internet chat rooms, and in ethicists' circles regarding how we, in the United States, allocate the scarce commodity of organs for transplant. How do we go about allocating a future for people who will die without a transplant? How do we go about denying it? When so many are waiting for their shot at a life worth living, is it fair to grant multiple organs or multiple