Ethical Issues In Organ Donation

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The number of people waiting for organ transplants in the United States increases every year. The United Network for Organ Sharing, a nonprofit, which coordinates the nation’s system of organ transplantation estimates, 18 people on the list die because they don’t receive an organ in time (SANGHAVI, 2009). For this reason, many organ donation organizations and transplant centers around the country work to increase public awareness of the urgent need for more organ donors. The experts at the Institute of Medicine, after being asked by the federal government to determine how a dying donor might be treated, ended up endorsing the procedure for donation after cardiac death, in which death occurs through a process of withdrawing life support and allowing the heart to develop “irreversible cessation” …show more content…
This was to increased use of donation after cardiac death (DCD) as a new strategy to grow the number of available organs because until recently, many organs have been transplanted from brain dead bodies. It seems justifiable to try to increasing the number of organs available for transplantation because it is important to care for patients with liver and kidney disease. However, this new mode of organ donation (DCD) is filled with controversy and some significant ethical reflection within the health care community.
Until recently, most organs have been transplanted from whole brain dead, which “ is equated with the death of the person” ( ITB, p.132). A person must be declared brain death before the medical team starts to harvest his/her organs. This type of organ transplantation is the so-called dead donor rule (SANGHAVI, 2009). For example there is this case of a brain-injured Amanda Panzini described in The New York Times journal. Her mother Robin Beaulieu were confronted by the possibility of donating her brain-injured daughter’s organs because her cerebral cortex — the part of
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