Ethics of transplantation

Ethics of transplantation 1
 Inadequate supple of blood organs

Not found for around 1015mins predicted

Part 1 - human being

Ethical issues in organ transplantation

shortage in organs → deciding who gets what organs

Ethics of transplantation 2
 deciding when a patient is clinically dead or in a position for organ
harvestation

Life long organ donor → parents happy with decision

Religious views → is the opt in system fair?, cultural objections

Patient must trust doctors to assign their organs

Points from groups:

Group 1 it is a particularly stressful time for the family members who make the
decision, so their opinion may be impacted and they may not actually have
complete autonomy
Group 2 There may be cultural/religious objections to organ transplantation, also
if family objects after patient’s death there can be problems between family and
doctors involved (who has power of consent? - is it fair to have an opt in system
Group 3 Issues relating to how they decide who gets the organ, found a study
running by Cambridge which talked about allocating ‘suboptimal’ organs to people
with similar lifestyle choices
Clinical evidence of death, familial pressure of a living donor and patient may have
expressed interest but not officially signed up

Group 5 Donor might not want to give a transplant and they dont know its now an
opt out system due to recent change in guidance.
Group 6 We talked about the issues surrounding prioritisation for organs. E.g.
should someone's issues with alcoholism reduce their chance of getting an organ?
Should age be a factor?
Key issues summarised for SAP → easy fascinating read link:

Ethics of transplantation 3
 Part 2 Death determination and organ donation

Ethics of transplantation 4
 Brain dead - heart is beating → organs remain perfused - maintained for 12 hours
before all life support turned off (ventilator and medication stopped) → all decided
by critical care consultants

Ethics of transplantation 5
 He was already too old for more organ transplant of the larger organs

One family member suffered hugely with having to watch their family member
being kept alive and having to watch them die

Part 3 cases:

Ethics of transplantation 6
Ethics of transplantation 7
Ethics of transplantation 8
 How much consideration would the answer to ‘ability to pay privately’ contribute
with the NHS principle: “Access to NHS services is based on clinical need, not an
individual’s ability to pay” → but its at the point of access - so something as
common as syringing someones ears for wax would have to be done privately due
to huge waiting lists → shouldnt for the NHS but pragmatically it does as waiting
lists are too long

Ethics of transplantation 9