Ethical Aspects Of Organ Allocation

This paper is going to focus on the importance of getting a better way for Medicare to handle the needs of transplant patients. The current situation isn’t a good one. The patients are the ones that suffer while the medical insurance companies and centers keep making more and more money. This is showing to me how much of the healthcare has turned to be about that. The transplant centers are needed but there is so much red tape that they have to go through to be approved by Medicare it makes it hard for them to open. What seems like should be an easy fix sure isn’t when you look into it.

England currently practices an opt-in system of organ donation. The waiting list for organ donor transplants exceeds 10,000 meaning that people are losing their lives everyday due to a shortage of donor organs. It has been suggested for a while that England adopts the opt-out system, in order to increase donation rates and decrease the number of people dying whilst waiting for an organ transplant. This systematic review aims to present the different ethical arguments supporting a change of organ donation system to opting-out instead of opting-in.

In 1983 Dr H Barry Jacobs, a physician from Virginia, whose medical license had been revoked after a conviction for Medicare mail-fraud, founded International Kidney Exchange, Ltd. He sent a brochure to 7,500 American hospitals offering to broker contracts between patients with end-stage-renal-disease and persons willing to sell one kidney. His enterprise never got off the ground, but Dr Jacobs did spark an ethical debate that resulted in hearings before a congressional committee headed by Albert Gore, Jr., then a representative from the state of Tennessee. The offensive proposal for kidney sales led to the National Organ Transplant Act to become law in

Available became controversial. While the question of the dialysis machine is still controversial, the health system was caught in another ethical dilemma regarding organ transplantation. Organ transplantation is closely linked to the issue of cleanliness because patients with kidney failure can get an organ transplant as an alternative to hemodialysis. The issue is complicated by the fact Medicare is financed by organ transplant, and there are those who believe that the distribution of rare transplant is not right. There are thousands of terminal patients whose lives can be saved by organ transplantation, but there are no formulas of work that can be used to determine which of the thousands of patients will be given priority. It is left to the discretion of medical officers to decide who is worth saving. The ability to keep someone alive by replacing one or more of their major organs is a splendid achievement of medicine of the 20th century.

In today’s medical field there is a profuse amount of room for ethical questioning concerning any procedure performed by a medical professional. According to the book Law & Ethics for Medical Careers, by Karen Judson and Carlene Harrison, ethics is defined as the standards of behavior, developed as a result of one’s concept of right and wrong (Judson, & Harrison, 2010). With that in mind, organ transplants for inmates has become a subject in which many people are asking questions as to whether it is morally right or wrong.

Organ donation can be a lifesaving transaction that can save people from all walks of life. The justice-based ethics theory ensures that these transactions are without bias. That a person who receives an organ will not be discriminated against based on their life. This theory is supposed to give everyone an equal chance at receiving the medical help they may require. This is very important when trying to distribute vital, lifesaving organs. Unfortunately, this theory does not always get put into practice.

In this paper I will be using the normative theory of utilitarianism as the best defensible approach to increase organ donations. Utilitarianism is a theory that seeks to increase the greatest good for the greatest amount of people (Pense2007, 61). The utilitarian theory is the best approach because it maximizes adult organ donations (which are the greater good) so that the number of lives saved would increase along with the quality of life, and also saves money and time.

Throughout history physicians have faced numerous ethical dilemmas and as medical knowledge and technology have increased so has the number of these dilemmas. Organ transplants are a subject that many individuals do not think about until they or a family member face the possibility of requiring one. Within clinical ethics the subject of organ transplants and the extent to which an individual should go to obtain one remains highly contentious. Should individuals be allowed to advertise or pay for organs? Society today allows those who can afford to pay for services the ability to obtain whatever they need or want while those who cannot afford to pay do without. By allowing individuals to shop for organs the medical profession’s ethical

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.

One of the most classic ethical dilemmas of medical practice is that of the organ transplant, typically a liver or kidney to go to the lesser of two abusers of their own bodies when discussed at the dinner table. The real plight that many people have to face is the fact that organs available for transplant are few and far between, so committees have to decide who gets first rights to various organs. Now, an already complex medical dilemma is becoming even more complicated with the prospect of artificial intelligence possibly determining who gets any given organ.

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

The medical industry had been achieving more in the stage of medical advancements, though they are still in the early phase. Artificial organs have been one of those achievements. Although they have achieved such, artificial organs are not perfect. Most doctors as well as patients would prefer to replace a dying organ with a compatible human organ, rather than with an artificial or animal organ. Yet due to a there being less organs donated than recipients, artificial and animal organs are becoming more common in transplants. Most of this issue is because people are unaware of how organ donation works, the organs that can be donated, how many people are in need, and the advancements that have happened in the field. Organ donation saves hundreds of lives every year, but many lives are recklessly lost due to a shortage of organ donors.

Another potential strategy is mandated choice where every individual would have to indicate their wishes regarding organ transplantation in legal documents e.g. drivers licenses and hospitals must comply with the written wishes of the individual regardless of what their family may want. This method has a positive aspect in that it enforces the concept of individual autonomy, but the downside being that it requires an enormous level of trust in the medical system.

It also considers that such a valuable resource should be treated as it; therefore, the allocation of this finite resource should have the relevance that requires. The allocation policies should cover major objectives such as providing fair and equal access to organs for all patients without discrimination, as well as prolonging the life of the recipient and an overall ease of human affliction. However, reaching such achievement has been a difficult and highly complicated goal for the medical community. An effective allocation system would be one which is able to balance two major aspects, justice and utility. In the matter of justice, being that every single one of these organs is considered and viewed as national resource; most people argue that their allocation has to be as fair and equitable as possible, distributed equally among all the patients listed for an organ transplant. The allocation of the organs should be independent of race, age, ability to pay, blood group or any other physiological characteristics. To the same extent, regarding utility, it has been speculated that the current system in most countries fails in allocating properly this limited resource. Since the health system is under such scrutiny and with the tough duty of dealing with a restricted number of available organs, it has to guarantee that they are making the best use out of it. Depending on the internal policies

Due to the growing needs of human organ transplant donors, many medical professionals have attempted to find means of encouraging the public to donate their organs. Therefore, some within the medical profession may suggested that compensation or incentives may help boost the number of organs donor, thus shortening the growing list of needed organs for transplant procedures. As a matter of fact, may individuals within this field consider this method to be ethical sound and efficient since it will encourage the donating of human organs of living and deceased patients (Cherry, 2009). Clearly, the reason why these medical professionals are striving to put this proposition into effect is because it could greatly lower the transplant waiting list. Hence it could possibly save the lives of individuals who are suffering from organ failure and have been