Although the history of organ transplant has its roots in ancient Christian mythology, it is only in the past fifty years that body parts from a dead person have successfully been procured and transplanted into a living person. After fourteen years, the three main issues that Robert Veatch first outlined in his seminal study Transplantation Ethics still remain: deciding when human beings are dead; deciding when it is ethical to procure organs; and deciding how to allocate organs, once procured.
However, much has changed. Enormous strides have been made in immunosuppression. Alternatives to the donation model are debated much more openly—living donors are used more widely and hand and face transplants have become more common, raising issues of personal identity. In this second edition of Transplantation Ethics, coauthored by Lainie F. Ross, transplant professionals and advocates will find a comprehensive update of this critical work on transplantation policies.
Table of Contents
Preface
1. Religious and Cultural Perspectives
2. An Ethical Framework: General Theories of Ethics
PART I: DEFINING DEATH
3. The Dead Donor Rule and the Concept of Death
4. The Whole-Brain Concept of Death
5. The Circulatory, or Somatic, Concept of Death
6. The Higher-Brain Concept of Death
7. The Conscience Clause: How Much Individual Choice Can Our Society Tolerate
8. Crafting a New Definition-of-Death Law
PART II: PROCURING ORGANS
9. The Donation Model
10. Routine Salvaging and Presumed Consent
11. Markets for Organs
12. Live-Donor Transplants
13. High-Risk Donors
14. Xenotransplants: Using Organs from Animals
15. The Media’s Impact on Transplants and Directed Donation
PART III: ALLOCATING ORGANS
16. The Roles of the Clinician and the Public
17. A General Moral Theory of Organ Allocation
18. Voluntary Risks and Allocation: Does the Alcoholic Deserve a New Liver?
19. Multi-Organ, Split-Organ, and Repeat Transplants
20. The Role of Age in Allocation
21. The Role of Status: The Cases of Mickey Mantle, Robert Casey, Steve Jobs, and
Dick Cheney
22. Geography and Other Causes of Allocation Disparities
23. Socially Directed Donation: Restricting Donation by Social Group
24. Elective Organ Transplantation
25. Vascularized Composite Allografts: Hand, Face, and Uterine Transplants
Index
Reviews
"Praise for the first edition of Transplantation Ethics
"The book on transplantation ethics."—Choice
"Without question, the best and most important book on this topic."—James F. Childress, University of Virginia
"A comprehensive, knowledgeable and thoughtful treatise on the critical ethical issues those of us in the transplant field wrestle with each day. Nice job!"—Jimmy A. Light, MD, Director of Transplantation Services, Washington Hospital Center"—, reviewing a previous edition or volume
"This is a must-read book for anyone wishing to understand the complexities surrounding organ transplantation. Besdies thoroughness and depth of discussion, one of the many strenghths found throughout this book is the authors' repeated demonstration of the need for metaethical thinking. . . . This book is well researched, broadly reasoned, and offers several proposals for advancement in a multicultural and pluralistic society. . . . I highly recommend this book for those interested in a solid evaluation of most of the relevant issues surrounding death. . . . It is especially suited to the bioethics student, ethics committee member, and those interested in becoming an organ donor."—Ethics & Medicine
"Deserves to be the definitive reference on the shelf of transplant professionals interested in ethics and public policy."—Monash Bioethics Review
Awards
Congratulations to Robert M. Veatch, 2008 recipient of the American Society of Bioethics and the Humanities Lifetime Achievment Award.
About the Author
Robert M. Veatch is Professor of Medical Ethics at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Washington Regional Transplant Community as well as the Ethics Committee and the Vascular Composite Allografts Committee of the United Network for Organ Sharing. He has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities, the Henry Knowles Beecher Award from the Hastings Center, and gave the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of fifty books including The Basics of Bioethics and Case Studies in Biomedical Ethics.
Lainie F. Ross is the Carolyn & Matthew Bucksbaum Professor of Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago; professor in the departments of Pediatrics, Medicine, Surgery and the College; associate director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics; and codirector of the Institute for Translational Medicine. She is a recipient of the Patricia Price Brown Prize in Biomedical Ethics from the Oklahoma Health Sciences University and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. She is the author of two books, Children, Families and Health Care Decision-Making and Children in Medical Research: Access versus Protection.
