blog.bioethics.net
a Nature Top 50 science blog from The American Journal of Bioethics
Entries from blog.bioethics.net tagged with 'organ donation'
Any Argument in the Storm: Postrel Gets It Wrong on Kidney Donation
Virginia Postrel is picking a fight with the National Kidney Foundation for saying that paying organ donors would be an "affront" to unpaid donors and that it would "cheapen the gift", according to The New Yorker. Taking them on, living unpaid organ donor herself Virginia Postrel says that NKF's argument... (read the rest)
It's Not August! But The August Issue of AJOB is Already Online at Bioethics.net
Now available at bioethics.net is the August issue of The American Journal of Bioethics. This month's issue contains articles ranging in topics from organ conscription and whether the US ought to have an opt-out system for organ donation and a number of thought experiments supporting that position by Delaney and... (read the rest)
7% of Pediatric Hospitals Lacking DCD Policies. Call In the Clinical Ethicists! Wait. We Already Did.
Recent surveys have found that 7% of pediatric hospitals lack a policy regarding the criteria for donating organs after cardiac death, says a recent study published in JAMA, according to Medpage Today. What is perhaps more troubling, according to this research, is among the 93% of hospitals that have policies,... (read the rest)
Can You Ever Be Too Cautious with Cannibalism?
Alisa Harris of Patrol Magazine is worried that liberals are giving living organ donors a hard time. After all, in her blog post entitled "A Noble Form of Cannibalism", a phrase borrowed from Leon Kass' scholarship on organ donation, Harris starts out criticizing the medical establishment (and implicitly the bioethicists... (read the rest)
I Want My Kidney First. I Signed My Donor Card.
According to USA Today, a proposal has put forth by the president of the nonprofit organization, LifeSharers, to reward those who had agreed to be organ donors (by signing the organ donor cards) prior to being put on the transplant list by moving them to the top of the transplant... (read the rest)
The Eight-Way Kidney Swap
Washington Post video journalist Pierre Kattar became a living kidney donor so that his father could receive a kidney and have another chance at life. What became of Pierre's donation ultimately was an 8-way kidney exchange. To hear the story, watch the video below or read the article. Summer Johnson,... (read the rest)
Husband Wants Kidney Back
Many divorces turn acrimonious, but a New York divorce has turned potentially life-threatening. But a new litmus test has emerged for real acrimony: has your soon-to-be ex asked for a donated organ back? Only then do you know you are in a truly deadly divorce! According to Newsday, a... (read the rest)
Kidney on the Rocks or Perfused? I'll Take Mine Perfused.
As reported in TIME, researchers from the University of Groningen have found a new method to keep organs from cadaveric donors better preserved for transplant. Better than simply tossing them on ice in coolers, organs that were perfused, or had a cold blood-like substance pumped through them while they were... (read the rest)
Uninsured and Need an Organ? Forget it.
A study published by researchers from Harvard Medical School has found that persons who do not have health insurance are 20 times more likely to donate a liver or kidney for transplant than to receive one from another donor, says US News and World Report. While this inequity between organ... (read the rest)
Harvesting Hearts As Fast as One Can: Is It Ethical?
The controversy surrounding the New England Journal of Medicine article about using cardiac death as the criterion for death in pediatric heart transplant has sparked significant discussion among ethicists. Bioethicists have been asked to consider whether it is ethical that precious organs were harvested within literally seconds (75 to... (read the rest)
Should We Change the Definition of Death? Watch the Video...
Today's, New England Journal of Medicine published a report of successful pediatric heart transplantation from donors who suffered cardiac death. Part of their paper argues that using circulatory system failures as a definition of death would open up a significantly larger portion of cadavers available to donate organs. To hear... (read the rest)
The death row inmate as organ donor
In a recent issue of Good Magazine, Graeme Wood argues that we should explore the possibility of allowing death row prisoners to, essentially, die by organ donation: The real objection to the Mayan Protocol [death by organ donation] is aesthetic. Many want executions to remain grim affairs, and don’t want... (read the rest)
The Onion on organ "donation"
Anonymous Philanthropist Donates 200 Human Kidneys To Hospital -Greg Dahlmann... (read the rest)
Should consent for organ donation be presumed?
Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, set off a bit of row this past weekend with an op-ed calling for hospitals in the UK to adopt an "opt-out" policy for organ donation. That is, hospitals would presume that a person was willing to be an organ donor unless that person... (read the rest)
Weekend reading: organ donation, designer babies
NYT Mag: Desperately Seeking a Kidney Sally Satel recounts her story of looking for a kidney donor: Maimonides, the 12th-century Jewish physician and philosopher, believed that anonymous giving was nobler than charity performed face to face because it protected the beneficiary from shame or a sense of indebtedness. He was... (read the rest)
Weekend reading: physician-assisted suicide, organ donation, paleovirology
NYT Mag: Death in the Family Daniel Bergner writes about the effort of former Washington governor Booth Gardner, who has Parkinson's, to get a physician-assisted suicide referendum passed there in 2008: “Why do this?” he asked, turning from the other tables toward me. “I want to be involved in public... (read the rest)
Organ sales gain support
The Wall Street Journal has a long article about the growing (cautious) support for organ sales in the United States: "There's one clear argument for sales," [transplant surgeon] Dr. [Arthur] Matas told a gathering of surgeons earlier this year. The practice, currently illegal in the U.S., "would increase the supply... (read the rest)
WP: Organ procurers may be pushing a little too hard for donations
Via Art Caplan comes an article by Rob Stein in today's Washington Post about what seems like an increased aggressiveness on the part of organ procurement organizations: "I personally am very supportive of organ donation. But people I work with sometimes feel they are too pushy," said Mary Henman, an... (read the rest)
Sporula on Organ Donation
Ina's blog comments on a case of transplantation: Well, I used to make up a case like this one about Kaiser transplant surgeons to get students to think carefully about the consequences of various facets of our organ donation system and alternatives (e.g. paying donors, etc). People (see for example... (read the rest)
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