Word: organism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Organ transplantation is no isolated controversy; the issue arises as one problem in the relationship between science and public policy. Technology, whether it be artificial hearts or atom bombs, continually outruns both ethical standards and public policy in two ways. The sometimes inconceivable new power of scientific advances that give us the ability to tinker with DNA, to replace a defective heart, disrupts the ethical standards we use to judge those powers. Secondly, the sheer speed at which science forces issues upon us outstrips ethical standards. Rapid technological change leaves little time to assess consequences; we cannot know what...
...society. The point is not to abandon the condemn/condone way of dealing with science ethics issues, but to see its inadequacy, to recognize that the rapidly changing and overwhelming new powers of science radically overturn the way we make ethical choices and public policies. The Task Force on Organ Transplants is a step in this direction...
According to Roberts, the concern of the task force is to limit the financial scale of the organ transplant business. The committee recommends a "no new facilities" policy in which the state would use the institutions, the hospitals, to restrict the number of operations performed. "Creating a limited capacity," in which "access [is] a function of medical condition" not of ability to pay, is the solution. Such restrictions would also ensure that other state-funded programs are not strangled by high costs of transplants...
...task force is choosing among decision-making processes. Their choice is a practically informed moral judgment between what they consider better or worse ways of deciding how to allocate organ transplants. The strongest negative implication of the "limited capacity" scenario is an increased possibility that a patient who might benefit from a transplant could be denied one through lack of funds. The task force has decided that other Medicaid programs are more important; perhaps they are, though it should be noted, for example, that the kind of heart defect suffered by Baby Fae kills a substantial number of infants...
CLEARLY VERY real limits on available organs and funds require some compromise on the issue of transplants, yet the limited capacity approach can be only part of the solution. The issue of organ transplant distinguishes itself from other pressing medical controversies, like abortion, because it creates a competition that entails the somewhat morbid prospect of the buying and selling of organs, and thus lives, for profit. The "limited capacity" scenario allows for "retrospective review," i.e. hindsight, because it slows down transplant technology. However, this slowdown could actually limit the possibility of resolving the competition by removing the constraints--by developing...