The Welsh Transplant Incident

Abstract

Abstract Hughes and Stuart’s shocking and unexpected deaths from the transplant treatments they received at Cardiff’s University Hospital of Wales could, in Lord Denning’s terminology, be described as ‘a most extraordinary chapter of accidents’. As Hughes and Stuart’s transplant treatments were based on expanded criteria donor kidneys, their deaths underscore not only the perennial problem of organ shortage in England and Wales which necessitates the clinical use of ‘high risk’ organs; but also, their deaths invite a re-examination of some of the ethical and legal issues involved in transplantation with expanded criteria donor organs. Being incomparable in calamity and rarity, the Welsh transplant incident is bound to raise novel issues of first impression in negligence, issues that this essay attempts to identify and analyse.