Should We Reject Donated Organs on Moral Grounds or Permit Allocation Using Non‐Medical Criteria?: A Qualitative Study

Conditional and directed deceased organ donations occur when donors (or often their next of kin) attempt to influence the allocation of their donated organs. This can include asking that the organs are given to or withheld from certain types of people, or that they are given to specified individuals. Donations of these types have raised ethical concerns, and have been prohibited in many countries, including the UK. In this article we report the findings from a qualitative study involving interviews with potential donors (n = 20), potential recipients (n = 9) and transplant staff (n = 11), and use these results as a springboard for further ethical commentary. We argue that although participants favoured unconditional donation, this preference was grounded in a false distinction between ‘medical’ and ‘non‐medical’ allocation criteria. Although there are good reasons to maintain organ allocation based primarily upon the existing ‘medical’ criteria, it may be premature to reject all other potential criteria as being unacceptable. Part of participants' justification for allocating organs using ‘medical’ criteria was to make the best use of available organs and avoid wasting their potential benefit, but this can also justify accepting conditional donations in some circumstances. We draw a distinction between two types of waste – absolute and relative – and argue that accepting conditional donations may offer a balance between these forms of waste.     

Influencing relatives to respect donor autonomy: Should we nudge families to consent to organ donation?

Refusing consent to organ donation remains unacceptably high, and improving consent rates from family or next‐of‐kin is an important step to procuring more organs for solid organ transplantation in countries where this approval is sought. We have thus far failed to translate fully our limited understanding of why families refuse permission into successful strategies targeting consent in the setting of deceased organ donation, primarily because our interventions fail to target underlying cognitive obstacles. Novel interventions to overcome these hurdles, incorporating an understanding of cognitive psychology and behavioral change therapy, may be beneficial. One potential intervention is to use the concept of nudge theory, where decision‐making is influenced by encouraging positive reinforcement and indirect suggestion. Purposefully nudging families to given consent for organ donation by understanding, and then overcoming, their inherent cognitive biases is novel but also controversial. This article explores the roles of relatives in decisions about organ donation, how nudge theory translates to organ donation and discusses the arguments for and against its application.     

Will more organs save more lives? Cost‐effectiveness and the ethics of expanding organ procurement

The assumption that procuring more organs will save more lives has inspired increasingly forceful calls to increase organ procurement. This project, in contrast, directly questions the premise that more organ transplantation means more lives saved. Its argument begins with the fact that resources are limited and medical procedures have opportunity costs. Because many other lifesaving interventions are more cost‐effective than transplantation and compete with transplantation for a limited budget, spending on organ transplantation consumes resources that could have been used to save a greater number of other lives. This argument has not yet been advanced in debates over expanded procurement and could buttress existing concerns about expanded procurement. To support this argument, I review existing empirical data on the cost‐effectiveness of transplantation and compare them to data on interventions for other illnesses. These data should motivate utilitarians and others whose primary goal is maximizing population‐wide health benefits to doubt the merits of expanding organ procurement. I then consider two major objections: one makes the case that transplant candidates have a special claim to medical resources, and the other challenges the use of cost‐effectiveness to set priorities. I argue that there is no reason to conclude that transplant candidates’ medical interests should receive special priority, and that giving some consideration to cost‐effectiveness in priority setting requires neither sweeping changes to overall health priorities nor the adoption of any specific, controversial metric for assessing cost‐effectiveness. Before searching for more organs, we should first ensure the provision of cost‐effective care.     

Skin Donors Positive for HBV Core Antibodies – to Bank or Not to Bank? An Overview from a Regional Tissue Bank

A prompt transplantation of skin allografts on patients with severe, large body area burns is a preferred treatment, but depends on a suitable supply of tissue donors. Limiting factors include donors' identification, families consent, and following the standards – exclusion due to assessed transmissible diseases. To increase the current rate of skin donations to our regional skin bank, we reviewed the data of all potential organ donors, identified at Soroka University Medical Center from October 1997 to December 2000 and evaluated the causes for exclusion, especially due to HBV serological profile. 114/168 (67.9%) patients did not meet the indicated standards for organ donation, among which 20/114 patients (17.5%) positive for anti-HBc (anti-HBc⁺). 54/168 persons were declared brain dead, with consents obtained from 21 families. To discuss the intriguing approval of skin from potential donors with anti-HBc⁺ serology, the literature was reviewed, specifically – the reported outcomes of organ transplants from anti-HBc⁺ donors, updates of HBV and skin, available tests, and finally a look for a safe commendable algorithm. The results suggested that HBV might be replicating in the skin, but proven communication of HBV has not been reported following grafting skin from anti-HBc⁺ donors. Unlike other procured organs and tissues, grafted banked skin is a temporary cover, storable up to six years, under appropriate conditions. Hence, banking of skin from anti-HBc⁺ donors might be considered for future grafting of patients with identical serological profiles, presumably immune to a subsequent HBV infection, until a further re-evaluation of the standards. This procedure is anticipated to increase the potential of organ and tissue donations, specifically skin.     

Should We Formulate an Incentivized Model Facilitating Kidney Donation from Living Donors? A Focus on Turkey's Current System

Kidney transplantation is a lifesaving medical treatment. However, very high demand for kidneys with low kidney donation causes a black market that exploits patients’ desperation and donors’ vulnerability. The current kidney donation programs fail to produce promising results to avoid illegal and unethical kidney trafficking and commercialism. Even though the primary goal of kidney donation is to increase the number of deceased organ donations, in some countries, like Turkey, due to religious or cultural concerns, it is impossible to supply adequate deceased kidney donations. In this view, the aim of this paper is to examine kidney trafficking in the scope of Turkey's current organ donation system and propose a new model, named the Incentivized Kidney Donation Model (IKDM), to increase kidney donation from living donors. The model encompasses the following benefits offered to kidney donors; lifetime health insurance, exemptions from copayments/contribution shares, priority when receiving an organ, priority when finding a job, income tax exemptions for salaried employees, and free or discounted public utilities. This normative model has the potential to promote donors’ altruistic acts as well as the solidarity and loyalty among members of a society without violating ethical values and internationally accepted principles.     

Opt‐in or opt‐out to increase organ donation in South Africa? Appraising proposed strategies using an empirical ethics analysis

Utilising empirical ethics analysis, we evaluate the merits of systems proposed to increase deceased organ donation in South Africa (SA). We conclude that SA should maintain its soft opt‐in policy, and enhance it with ‘required transplant referral’ in order to maximise donor numbers within an ethically and legally acceptable framework. In SA, as is the case worldwide, the demand for donor organs far exceeds the supply thereof. Currently utilising a soft opt‐in system, SA faces the challenge of how to increase donor numbers in a context which is imbued with inequalities in access to healthcare, multiplicitous personal beliefs and practices, distrust of organ transplant and varying levels of education and health literacy. We argue that a hard opt‐in, opt‐out or mandated consent system would be problematic, and we present empirical data from Gauteng Province illustrating barriers to ethically sound practice in soft consent systems. Ultimately, we argue that in spite of some limitations, a soft opt‐in system is most realistic for SA because its implementation does not require extensive public education campaigns at national level, and it does not threaten to further erode trust at a clinical level. However, to circumvent some of the clinical‐level barriers identified in our empirical study, we propose a contextually sensitive option for “enabling” soft opt‐in through “required transplant referral”. We argue that this system is legally defensible, enhances ethical practice and could also increase donor numbers as it has in many other countries.     

TRADING WITH THE WAITING‐LIST: THE JUSTICE OF LIVING DONOR LIST EXCHANGE

In a Living Donor List Exchange program, the donor makes his kidney available for allocation to patients on the postmortal waiting‐list and receives in exchange a postmortal kidney, usually an O‐kidney, to be given to the recipient he favours. The program can be a solution for a candidate donor who is unable to donate directly or to participate in a paired kidney exchange because of blood group incompatibility or a positive cross‐match. Each donation within an LDLE program makes an additional organ available for transplantation. But because most of the pairs making use of the program will be A/O incompatible, it will also tend to increase the waiting time for patients with blood group O, who already have the longest waiting time. It has therefore been objected that the program is materially unjust, because it further disadvantages the least advantaged. This objection appeals to John Rawls’ difference principle. However, the context for which Rawls proposed that difference principle, is significantly different from the present one. Applying the principle here amounts to a lop‐sided trade‐off between considerations of need and considerations of overall utility. Considerations of formal justice, however, may lead to a stronger objection to LDLE programs. Such a program means that one O‐patient on the waiting list is exempted from the application of the general criteria used in constructing the list because he has a special bargaining advantage. This objection is spelled out and weighed against the obvious attraction of LDLE in a situation of (extreme) organ scarcity.     

Donor Perspectives on Issues Associated with Donation of Genetic Samples and Information: An Australian Viewpoint

This paper provides a legal overview of key issues associated with donation of genetic samples and information from a donor perspective. In particular, it addresses the property status of samples as well as issues in respect of consent, privacy, commercialisation and benefit sharing. The paper highlights the need for appropriate protection and safeguards for individuals, but also, importantly, for understanding what donors actually think and want in terms of genetic research and the use of their samples and information. The paper seeks to emphasise the importance of transparency and accountability in the conduct of research in order to maximise donor participation and confidence and public trust in general.