Legal & Ethical Safeguards: Protection of Society's Most Vulnerable Participants in a Commercialized Organ Transplantation System

Abstract

Legal and ethical questions regarding existing organ transplant procurement policies and practices are numerous and unsettling. They arise because transplantable organs are scarce. The scarcity of such organs has been the hue and cry of several medical and legal scholars. For example, the scarcity creates competition among those who wait, necessitating equitable organ allocation procedures and guidelines. Medical obstacles surround the determination of when, how, and on whom such procedures can be performed successfully. Other obstacles range from finding a suitable donor for proper “matching” with the intended donee, to the time constraints involved in preserving excised organs until transplantation, to the donee's ability to fight off rejection of transplanted organs. There is also the obstacle of locating available organs. As medical technology continues to advance, the number of possible organ sources increases. Currently, these sources have included live human donors, cadavers, mechanical devices, animals, fetuses, anencephalic infants, and “brain-dead” donors.