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Chapter 6
Chapter 6

Organ Procurement & Transplantation

Transplantation offers a last hope for patients whose organs are failing. But the promise of transplantation is tempered by chronic shortage of suitable organs and ongoing challenges of fairly distributing these severely limited resources, ensuring informed consent on the part of both organ donors and organ recipients, and avoiding conflicts of interest.

Organ procurement

The need for organs for transplantation far outstrips the supply. Efforts to increase donation must protect the interests of living and deceased donors.
Opinion 6.1.1

Transplantation of Organs from Living Donors

Donation of nonvital organs and tissue from living donors can increase the supply of organs available for transplantation, to the benefit of patients with end-stage organ failure. Enabling individuals to donate nonvital organs is in keeping with the goals of treating illness and relieving suffering so long as the benefits to both donor and recipient outweigh the risks to both.
Opinion 6.1.2

Organ Donation After Cardiac Death

Physicians should support innovative approaches to increasing the supply of organs for transplantation but must balance this obligation with their duty to protect the interests of their individual patients. Organ donation after cardiac death is one approach being undertaken to make greater numbers of transplantable organs available.
Opinion 6.1.3

Studying Financial Incentives for Cadaveric Organ Donation

Offering financial incentives for donation raises ethical concerns about potential coercion, the voluntariness of decisions to donate, and possible adverse consequences, including reducing the rate of altruistic organ donation and unduly encouraging perception of the human body as a source of profit. These concerns merit further study to determine whether, overall, the benefits of financial incentives for organ donation outweigh their potential harms.
Opinion 6.1.4

Presumed Consent & Mandated Choice for Organs from Deceased Donors

Donations under presumed consent (or mandated choice) would be ethically appropriate only if it could be determined that individuals were aware of the presumption that they were willing to donate organs and if effective and easily accessible mechanisms for documenting and honoring refusals to donate had been established.
Opinion 6.1.5

Umbilical Cord Blood Banking

Transplants of umbilical cord blood have been recommended to treat a variety of conditions. Physicians who provide obstetrical care should be prepared to inform pregnant women of the various options regarding cord blood donation or storage and the potential uses of donated samples.
Opinion 6.1.6

Anencephalic Newborns as Organ Donors

In the context of prospective organ donation from an anencephalic newborn, physicians may ethically provide ventilator assistance and other medical therapies that are necessary to sustain organ perfusion and viability until such time as a determination of death can be made in accordance with accepted medical standards, but may only retrieve and transplant the organs of an anencephalic newborn after such determination of death.

Organ transplantation

Organ transplantation is unique in that it involves two patients, donor and recipient, both of whose interests must be protected.
Opinion 6.2.1

Guidelines for Organ Transplantation from Deceased Donors

Organ transplantation is unique in that it involves two patients, donor and recipient, both of whose interests must be protected. Concern for the patient should always take precedence over advancing scientific knowledge.
Opinion 6.2.2

Directed Donation of Organs for Transplantation

Donation of needed organs to specified recipients has long been permitted in organ transplantation. Directed organ donation policies that produce a net gain of organs for transplantation and do not unreasonably disadvantage other transplant candidates are ethically acceptable.

Special issues in organ procurement & transplantation

Xenotransplantation is a novel proposal for addressing the shortage of transplantable organs that can pose distinctive ethical challenges with respect to patient safety and public health.
Opinion 6.3.1

Xenotransplantation

Xenotransplantation, i.e., using organs or tissues from nonhuman animal species for transplantation into human patients, is a possible novel means of addressing the shortage of transplantable organs that can pose distinctive ethical challenges with respect to patient safety and public health.