Health Disparities in Public Health

Abstract

Can and will a person become an organ donor? Before such an altruistic act occurs, there is the ethic behind the action. There is an internalization of an ethic that the person agrees or disagrees with organ donation, no matter the variant. There is a large sense of agency and responsibility over the integrity of one’s body. The public does care what the “network” thinks about our personally held norms of living donation and sanctity of the body. I present the position that understanding of the norms of living organ donation requires an examination of the personal social “network” surrounding the potential donor. Networks rely on connection which may lead to deliberate consensus building (or a reason to conform in order to limit disharmony). There will be some level of network-level engagement with others in this process (for better or for worse). Also, a symptom of personal framing of experience may affect the public’s proclivity to donate organs in insufficient numbers to satisfy the overwhelming need for life-sustaining kidneys. “Strength in numbers” hurts—according to scope-severity paradox and its close kin, scope insensitivity. There appears to be less of an incentive to upset rational choice and side with emotion if enlarging health awareness is required to turn the tide of disease. But I argue that this emotive will more likely activate a collective empathy if an end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patient that needs a kidney is personally known to us.

Earlier versions of this chapter appeared as Battle-Fisher M (2010) Organ donation ethics: are donors autonomous within collective networks? Online J Health Ethics 6(2). http://aquila.usm.edu/ojhe/vol6/iss2/6 as well as Battle-Fisher, M. (2011) Severity of scope versus altruism: working against organ donation’s realization of goals—an essay. Online J Health Ethics 7(2). http://aquila.usm.edu/ojhe/vol7/iss2/4. Permission has been secured from the publisher.