Abstract
The Times of London reported on June 11, 1987 that on one of her reelection campaign stops, when approached to volunteer for LIFELINK, a transplant donor register, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher agreed and signed a statement acknowledging that her organs could be removed, upon her death, and that, specifically, her heart, lungs, kidneys, eyes, and skin could be given to patients awaiting transplants.1 As a registered donor, Mrs. Thatcher became one of 11,000 who have already become participants in a pilot project based in Birmingham that hopes to become a national computer record of all such potential donors. Ideally, all large British hospitals will subscribe to LIFELINK and thus be given direct computer access to the registered donors, so that when a patient dies, hospital authorities will be able to determine immediately if he were registered with LIFELINK.2
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Notes
Seton, Mrs. Thatcher Volunteers for Transplant Donor Register, The Times (London), June 11, 1987, at 2, col. 2.
Id.
Childress, Some Moral Connections Between Organ Procurement and Organ Distribution, 3 J. Contemp. Health L. & Pol’y 85, 88 (1987).
Id. at 85.
Comment, The Law of Human Organ Procurement: A Modest Proposal, 1 J. Contemp. Health L. & Pol’y 195, 196 (1985).
Childless, supra note 3, at 87, 88.
Id. at 86. See National Organ Transplant Act, Pub. L. 98-507, 98 Stat. 2339-2348; 42 U.S.C. § 273-274 (1984).
Id.
Id.
See 8A Unif. Laws Ann. 15-16 (1983).
Supra note 3, at 88.
Id. at 89.
Id.
O’Rourke & Boyle, Presumed Consent for Organ Donation, America 326 (Nov. 22, 1986).
Id. at 327.
M. Shapiro, R. Spece, Jr., Cases, Materials & Problems on Bioethics and Law 740 (1981).
Id.
Id.
Id. at 767.
Id. Interestingly, the average recipient of a cadaver kidney has but a 20% chance of obtaining a transplant in the first year after the decision to transplant has been made. Id. at 769.
See generally Smith, Death Be Not Proud: Medical, Ethical and Legal Dilemmas In Resource Allocation, 3 J. Contemp. Health L. & Pol’y 47 (1987).
Dukeminier & Sanders, Organ Transplantation: A Proposal for Routine Salvaging of Cadaver Organs, 279 New Eng. J. Med. 413 (1968).
Id.
Id.
Id.
Id.
A commentator has suggested that persons should be required to donate tissues or organs if: “(A) the plaintiff shows by clear and convincing evidence: (1) that he is in imminent danger of dying from a disease that can be treated by transplantation...; (2) that he stands to experience substantial benefit from such a transplant with the defendant serving as donor; (3) that transplantation from the defendant is the exclusive mode of treatment that offers the prospect of substantial benefit to the plaintiff; and (4) that the organ, tissue, or fluid sought is expendable by the donor—given the quantity of tissue or fluid to be removed and its regenerative capacity—and that the removal of the organ, tissue, or fluid will not result in disfigurement;” and “(5) the court finds that the risks to the defendant/donor are greatly outweighed by the benefits to the plaintiff/patient.” Comment, Coerced Donation of Body Tissues: Can We Live with McFall v. Shimp?, 40 Ohio St. L. J. 409, 415-416, 420-421 (1979).
Thompson, The Eerie World of Living Heads, Wash. Post, Feb. 14, 1988, at C3, col. 1.
Id.
Id.
Id.
Salamone, The Problems of Neomorts, Wash. Post Health Mag., Nov. 11, 1986, at 16.
Id.
Id.
Dukeminier, Supplying Organs for Transplantation, 68 Mich. L. Rev. 811 (1970).
Id.
Id.
Caplan, Should Fetuses or Infants be Utilized as Organ Donors?, 1 Bioethics 1 (1987). See Mahowald, Silver & Ratcheson, The Ethical Options in Transplanting Fetal Tissue, Hastings Center Rep. 9 (Feb. 1982); Hubbard, The Baby Fae Case, 6 Med. & Law 385 (1987).
Surgeons to Pursue Animal-to-Human Transplants, Wash. Post Health Mag., Mar. 10, 1987, at 20.
Id.
Caplan, supra note 37.
Id. at 4. See Capron, Anencephalic Donors: Separate the Dead from the Dying, Hastings Center Rep. 5 (Feb. 1987).
Caplan, supra note 37, at 5.
Id. at 6.
See Smith, Intimations of Life: Extracorporeality and The Law, 21 Gonz. L. Rev. 395 (1986). The National Institute of Health announced that it is investigating whether doctors are taking tissue from live fetuses for use in research before they are declared dead. This action was undertaken in response to a charge by the Foundation on Economic Trends and social activist Jeremy Rivkin that “physicians do not perform tests on aborted fetuses to determine whether they are dead prior to removing tissues or organs” for research use. Hilts, NIH Probes Allegations of Live Fetal Tissue Use, Wash. Post, Sept. 9, 1987, at A4, col. 1. Prompted by an NIH proposal to implant fetal tissue into patients with Parkinson’s disease, the Reagan Administration halted all federal research in the field. Specter, NIH Told to Stop Use of Aborted Fetuses: Controversial, Promising Tests Banned by Administration, Wash. Post, April 15, 1988, at 1, col. 4. An NIH panel made preliminary findings, however, that using tissue from aborted fetuses for research and transplantation was acceptable. A final report to NIH on the issue will be presented in December, 1988, and draft guidelines submitted. Specter, Fetal Tissue “Acceptable” For Research: NIH Panel Avoids Stance on Abortion, Wash. Post, Sept. 17, 1988, at 1, col. 4. The White House is proposing an executive order that would ban all research conducted or funded by the federal government using fetal tissues obtained from induced abortions, and allow research only when the fetus died spontaneously. Rich & Spector, Bowen Delays Decision on Fetal Tissue, Wash. Post, Sept. 16, 1988, at A3, col. 4.
Caplan, supra note 37, at 7. See Gianelli, Anencephalic Heart Donor Creates New Ethics Debate, Am. Med. News at 51 (Nov. 6, 1987) See Trafford, Fetal Tissue and Fine Lines: New Technologies Test the Power of Utilitarian Principles, Wash. Post Health Mag., at 7, col. 1, Sept. 20, 1988, where the conclusion is made that it is impossible to separate the medical debate over fetal research from the political debate over abortion.
R. Fox, J. Swazey, The Courage to Fail 33-34 (1974).
Kirby, Bioethical Decisions and Opportunity Costs, 2 J. Contemp. Health L. & Pol’y 7, 21 (1986).
Id. at 20.
Note, Scarce Medical Resources, 69 Colum. L. Rev. 620, 653 (1969).
Gillie, Cuts at Guys: Now Hit Kidney Victims, The Sunday Times (London), Mar. 3, 1985, at 4, col. 4.
Smith, Triage: Endgame Realities, 1 J. Contemp. Health L. & Pol’y 143 (1985).
Childress, supra note 3, at 98.
Id.
Id. at 104.
Battiata, Kidney Transplants Draw Foreigners Here, Wash. Post, Sept. 19, 1983, at 1, col. 2.
Id.
Id.
See Boy Awaiting 4th Liver Develops Pneumonia, N.Y. Times, April 30, 1987, at Y13, col. 1.
Id.
Evans, 25-Hour Transplant: Weary Parents Await Va. Girl’s Recovery, Wash. Post, Mar. 5, 1987, at C1, col. 2.
Id.
Id.
Supra note 16, at 822.
See generally Curran, A Problem of Consent: Kidney Transplantation in Minors, 34 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 891 (1959).
Supra note 16, at 768. The State Attorney General of Florida brought an investigation recently to probe charges that employes of an organ procurement agency—The Florida Regional Bone and Tissue Bank and The Florida West Coast Organ Procurement Foundation—secretly harvested human body parts and sold them to overseas buyers. Wash. Post, Mar. 11, 1987, at A7, col. 1. See also Engel, Va. Doctors Plans Company to Arrange Sale of Human Kidneys, Wash. Post, Sept. 19, 1983, at A9, col. 1, where plans to open a company that would broker human kidneys for sale by arranging for donors throughout the world—and especially Third World countries—to sell one of their kidneys (for $10,000) were disclosed.
Smith, Triage: Endgame Realities, 1 J. Contemp. Health L. & Pol’y 143, 145 (1985).
See generally Sanders & Dukeminier, Medical Advance and Legal Lag: Hemodialysis and Kidney Transplant, 15 U.C.L.A. L. Rev. 357 (1968).
Smith, Death Be Not Proud: Medical, Ethical and Legal Dilemmas in Resource Allocation, 3 J. Contemp. Health L. & Pol’y 47 (1987).
Id. at 146.
Id. See generally Pellegrino, Rationing Health Care: The Ethics of Gatekeeping, 2 J. Contemp. Health L. & Poly (1986).
Smith, supra note 64, at 147. Confronted with sparse health funds, the state of Oregon decided that it could no longer pay for most organ transplants for its citizens. The money that would have been allocated for this effort can now be utilized for the prenatal care of some 1,500 pregnant women. As the Governor of the state commented: “How can we spend every nickel in support of a few people”—about thirty organ transplants costing as much as $100,000.00 per case—“when thousands never see a doctor or eat a decent meal?” Specter, Rising Costs of Medical Treatment Forces Organ to ‘Play God’, Wash. Post, Feb. 5, 1988, at 1, col. 1.
Id.
Id.
Id. at 148.
See G. Smith, Genetics, Ethics and the Law 2, 8 (1981).
Id. at 148.
Id.
Id.
Id. at 149.
Id. See Freud, Organ Transplants: Ethical and Legal Problems in Moral Problems in Medicine at 44 (S. Gorowitz et al. eds. 1976).
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Smith, G.P. (1989). Organ Procurement and Transplantation. In: The New Biology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0803-2_5
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