Word: organ
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...question remains of how to judge who gets the available transplants. Benefit is not a clear-cut question, yet clearcut decisions must be made. However, it would be neither ethical nor possible to create a central computer-like authority to dole out judgments of patients. The power of organ transplant technology will be controlled by somebody, be they the wealthy patients, the needy patients, the state law makers, the hospitals, or the doctors; we must decide, then, who should control that power...
What the task force wants to do is pull up on the reins of a technology that saves lives and is on its way to saving more. The limiting of organ transplants to a small scale effort solves the problem of monetary drain on Medicaid. It does not, however, solve the overall problem. This ultimate resolution of expanding transplant availability, the only resolution that satisfies the strongest ethical implications of the problem, would be delayed, perhaps indefinitely, by the group's plan. What is missing is an assessment of what the constraining effects of the task force-advocated policy would...
Politically, the question is one of power; who should make and control the set of standard procedures for deciding how to allocate organ transplants. Since voting majorities of the public often take sides by condemning or condoning the role of technology, legislators and policy makers respond to these extremes. Though perhaps inevitable, this response need not preclude reassessment of the relation between science and public policy. What is obvious is that science expands the frontier of our living conditions. What needs to be recognized is that science is an ethical frontier, rapidly outmoding our ways of making decisions...
...helped evaluate a proposal to create a pioneering consortium of four Boston area hospitals that could perform liver transplants. The author of several books, he has also written articles addressing such issues as rising costs of technology and the inadequacy of traditional ethical standards in evaluating such procedures as organ transplants...
...dean proposes a number of suggestions for those both within and outside the medical profession, aimed at forcing all groups to rethink their priorities as individuals in a responsible society. To counter the drastically low rate of organ donation, one of the most serious constraints on transplants, he suggests that the United States follow the lead of many European countries and make organ donation more like the donation of blood: an act expected of all who are capable of doing...