In light of the debate surrounding organ donation, this paper argues that it is a necessary procedure that needs to be embraced by potential donors and patients. Kidneys, corneas, heart, lungs, liver, intestines, and several other body parts of living or deceased people can be donated to those in need This essay will discuss the benefits that organ transplants bring to the lives of many people, as well as their disadvantages, including a demand for organs that exceeds the supply and post-transplant infections and diseases. Finally, solutions to these problems and alternatives to organ transplants Organ transplantation raises a number of significant ethical issues ranging from how living and deceased donors become donors and how organs are allocated. The number of patients who could benefit from transplantation far exceeds the number of organs available despite efforts to increase the number of organs available, a circumstance that raises important ethical questions
The Ethics of Organ Donation in Modern World - Words | Essay Example
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If you want to buy a high quality paper on argumentative research paper topics organ transplant essay affordable price please use custom research paper writing services. Organ transplantation can extend life and improve the quality of life of patients. Organ organ transplant essay raises a number of significant ethical issues ranging from how living and deceased donors become donors and how organs are allocated, organ transplant essay.
The number of patients who could benefit from transplantation far exceeds the number of organs available despite efforts to increase the number organ transplant essay organs available, a circumstance that raises important ethical questions.
The first successful kidney transplants were performed in the s, transplanting a kidney from one living identical twin to another, avoiding the organ transplant essay problems previously encountered. Successful liver and heart transplants followed in the s. Immune response remained a significant barrier to successful transplantation until the mids with the development of cyclosporin which, together with surgical advances, led to significant success in transplantation of the kidney, heart, organ transplant essay, liver, lung, bowel, and pancreas between the mids and throughout the s.
Although the first successful kidney transplants were from living donors and transplants during the s continued to use either living kidney donors or organs from persons declared dead after their hearts stopped, the use of organs from cadavers quickly became the standard after criteria for determining death using neurological criteria were established and so-called brain death was recognized legally as death. This allowed for greater success in transplantation.
More organs became available and organs could be preserved organ transplant essay maintaining cadavers on mechanical support, organ transplant essay, avoiding ischemic damage. As the number of people seeking transplants has grown and the number of people donating organs after death has leveled off, organ transplant essay, efforts have been made to secure organs from other types of donors, namely, living donors and individuals who are declared dead using cardiorespiratory criteria donation after cardiac or circulatory death or DCD rather than neurological criteria.
Another way to increase the population of donors has been to expand the criteria for donor eligibility. Much less common have been efforts to successfully transplant animal organs into humans.
Bioengineered organs might change transplantation in the future. The dead donor rule refers to the requirement that, with the exception of living donors, organ donors must be dead before their organs are removed.
Organ donation may not be the cause of death, for example, removing a heart from a person who is nearly dead and expected to die soon would be the cause of death and is not permitted. Traditionally, organ transplant essay, death has been declared using cardiorespiratory criteria — persons were dead when their hearts stopped and they were no longer breathing.
With the advent of intensive care medicine, patients who previously would have died because they could not breathe on their own were being kept alive. Questions emerged organ transplant essay the permissibility of removing life support, which would lead to the cessation of circulation and respiration. Many were keen to ensure that physicians not be seen as killing patients by stopping treatment. If those patients already were dead before treatment is stopped, then it would be appropriate to stop mechanical interventions and other support.
The patients would not die because treatment was withheld. At the same time, there was a growing desire to make organs available for transplantation and to avoid ischemic damage to those organs, organ transplant essay. If some patients receiving intensive care already were dead and it was permissible to stop life-sustaining measures such as mechanical ventilation, some thought it might be permissible to remove organ transplant essay organs while their bodies were being maintained with intensive care measures.
Organ removal would not be the cause of death since they already were dead, and the organs would be better protected from ischemic damage, organ transplant essay. InHenry Beecher assembled the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death, organ transplant essay, which aimed to establish a new organ transplant essay for death — irreversible coma. Their work revolved around the question of whether there were patients being maintained using intensive care measures who already were dead because no central nervous system activity could be detected.
This report organ transplant essay that there are two different ways of establishing that a patient has died. One is the use of cardiorespiratory criteria and the other is the use of neurological criteria Beecher Laws incorporating this second way of determining death were adopted over time in many developed nations, organ transplant essay, though cultural acceptance and understanding of brain death often has not tracked the law Wijdicks ; DuBois and Anderson If patients can be declared dead when the functions of the brain have ceased irreversibly, physicians must know which brain functions must have ceased irreversibly and how to determine whether the relevant functions have ceased irreversibly.
Disagreement persists regarding the tests that are necessary and sufficient to show that this is the case Wijdicks and whether the whole brain, higher brain, or brain stem is the relevant focus of neurological criteria for death.
This variation might contribute to disagreements regarding the use of neurological criteria to declare death. If a patient declared dead in one institution or jurisdiction would not yet meet all of the criteria necessary to be declared dead in a different situation, it is understandable that declarations of death using neurological criteria would raise concerns for some.
For some people, the claim that a patient who appears to be profoundly injured but breathing albeit with mechanical support is dead is implausible. Much confusion has been documented among the public and health care professionals and, even where the law recognizes death declared using neurological criteria and cardiorespiratory criteria as equivalent, individuals might not recognize them as such DuBois and Anderson Significant cultural and religious factors affect acceptance of neurological death as death.
For example, some Orthodox Jews reject neurological criteria for declaring death Breitowitz Japan, a late adopter of a brain death law among developed nations, still faces significant cultural opposition to neurological criteria for determining death Asai et al. Among those who object to neurological criteria for determining death and do not recognize patients who meet those criteria as dead, some believe that it is wrong to use those patients as donors and others argue that we should abandon the requirement that patients be dead before they become donors Truog and Miller Historically death was declared using cardiorespiratory criteria.
One would expect that declaring patients dead when their organ transplant essay stops and they stop breathing would not be controversial, organ transplant essay.
Key areas of variation include the diagnostic tests that must be used and the amount of time that must pass after cardiac arrest before a physician may declare the patient dead and remove organs Dhanani et al. Standard criteria are in place to maximize the quality of the organs transplanted and the chance that the transplant will be successful. Expanded criteria organ transplants have higher graft failure rates than standard criteria transplants. The use of expanded criteria or nonideal donors raises a number of questions.
These include how to balance the risks of using a lower quality organ with the risks of dying while waiting, how much information about the risks of remaining on the waiting list for too long versus the risks of receiving an expanded criteria organ should be provided to potential organ recipients and how this information should be explained, and how recipients of expanded criteria organs should be treated in the case of graft failure.
Their bodies are maintained in an intensive care setting using mechanical ventilation and other support to keep organs healthy. These measures are maintained as the donor is taken to the operating room and organ recovery begins. Organs are cooled and preserved until they can be transplanted. These donors may donate their heart, organ transplant essay, lungs, liver, pancreas, kidneys, and intestinal organs. Families who organ transplant essay not recognize that a person who appears to be profoundly injured and unconscious but breathing with mechanical support can be dead may object to organ donation, for example.
Although in the early days of organ transplantation deceased donors were declared dead using cardiorespiratory criteria, these donors were not ideal because organs typically were damaged by a lack of oxygen, organ transplant essay. In the face of a growing demand for organs, particularly kidneys, unaccompanied organ transplant essay a growing number of eligible and willing donors, attention turned once again to people who are declared dead using cardiorespiratory criteria as organ donors in the s.
These donors, organ transplant essay, sometimes called DCD donors donation after cardiac or circulatory death or NHBDs non-heart-beating organ donors or DCDD donation after circulatory determination of death donors, typically donate kidneys.
In some cases liver and lungs, and rarely hearts, have been used. Donation after cardiac death includes planned or controlled donations as well as what are called uncontrolled uDCD or rapid organ recovery ROR donations. In neither case do donors meet the criteria for being declared dead using neurological criteria. Controlled DCD involves a person on a ventilator who has chosen typically through an advance directive or surrogate decision maker to discontinue life-sustaining measures and has a do-not-resuscitate order.
The expectation is that the patient will die subsequent to the removal of ventilator support. DCD donation typically involves removal of the ventilator in the operating room after the patient has been prepared for surgery to remove organs after death, that is, after the cessation of cardiorespiratory function. Variations in practice exist within and among nations, including the amount organ transplant essay time after which the heart stops that death is declared Dhanani et al.
Patients who do not die within a specified time frame do not become donors. In some cases, they may continue to live without ventilator support, organ transplant essay. In other cases, their deaths come after organs have experienced too much ischemic damage to be suitable for transplantation. Much of the controversy concerned the question of whether or not the donors were dead before their hearts were removed.
In part the debate turned on the amount of time between the cessation of the heartbeat and respiration and removal of the organs, organ transplant essay. In some cases, the infants were declared dead and organ removal began after only 75 s. The debate also involved the definition of cardiorespiratory organ transplant essay that is used in Colorado and some version of which is used in all 50 states in the USA.
A person may be declared dead using cardiorespiratory criteria when the patient experiences the irreversible cessation of circulation and respiration. If a patient is declared dead because his heart has stopped irreversibly but the heart then is restarted, albeit in a different body, organ transplant essay, is it true that the heart has stopped irreversibly and hence that the person has met the criteria to be declared dead before the organs are removed?
If the patient is declared dead before one is certain that auto-resuscitation is impossible, can we be certain that the circulator and respirator functions have stopped irreversibly? If the patient is declared dead in a time frame during which, under other circumstances, attempts would be made sometimes, though certainly not always successfully to restore circulatory and respirator function using advanced medical technology, organ transplant essay, are we justified in saying that the circulatory and respiratory functions have ceased irreversibly?
The relationship between irreversibility and permanence was the focus of many of these discussions. Proponents of DCD held that the donors were dead and opponents questioned the claim. In uncontrolled donation after cardiac death, a person is declared dead using cardiorespiratory criteria.
Because the death was not anticipated, the decedent is not in the operating room already prepared for organ removal surgery, organ transplant essay.
Instead, the person may die in the emergency room or in an ambulance after a failed resuscitation attempt, for example.
It might not be known at that time whether the person wanted to be a donor or whether the family will agree to organ donation. Organ preservation measures are initiated in the event that the decedent will be a donor. These measures can involve invasive techniques, such as inserting catheters in the femoral artery and vein to fill the abdominal cavity with cooling fluid, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, chest compressions to maintain circulation, and intubation to establish ventilation Verheijde et al.
Programs involving uDCD have been attempted in several countries, organ transplant essay, including Spain, France, and the USA, organ transplant essay. Washington, DC, implemented an uncontrolled donation after cardiac death pilot program in the mids Light Both types of donation after cardiac death raise ethical issues. Organ transplant essay central question is whether donors are dead at the time organs are removed. In uncontrolled DCD, additional questions include whether it organ transplant essay permissible to presume consent for organ preservation interventions before assessing donor status Verheijde et al, organ transplant essay.
Some have argued that this is not the kind of intervention for which presumed consent is reasonable, while others argue that these measures should be taken to preserve the opportunity to donate organs should it become known that a person wanted to be a organ transplant essay or had expressed a willingness to donate. Special concerns emerge in uncontrolled donation after cardiac death because new resuscitation techniques might be effective in resuscitating patients who previously would have died.
What was once an irreversible cessation of cardiorespiratory function might no longer be irreversible. Some of the organ preservation measures such as ECMO that are used restore circulatory and respiratory functions, albeit mechanically, in a way that challenges the use of cardiorespiratory criteria to declare death.
In some cases, pharmacological agents are used to suppress cardiac and neurological functions that sometimes return when advanced organ preservation techniques are implemented Verheijde et al. Balancing the interests of ensuring donor is dead waiting long enough after cardiac arrest and an interest in maximizing possible benefit to the recipient minimizing damage to the organs by minimizing wait time involves important value judgments.
These competing interests as well as the interest of other parties, such as transplant organizations, organ transplant essay, organ transplant essay professionals, and medical institutions raise concerns about potential conflicts of interest in organ transplantation decisions and decisions about declaring potential donors dead Verheijde et al.
With the growing number of people waiting for organs, especially kidneys, there has been a growing call for the use of living donors. Living donors may donate one organ from a paired set of organs kidneys or a portion of an organ that can function even organ transplant essay part of it is removed a lobe of the liver or lung.
Living kidney donation is more common and less risky to donors than living liver or lung donation. Outcomes for kidney recipients overall are better with kidneys from living donors than from deceased donors Rudge et al, organ transplant essay.
Organ Donation and Transplantation: How Does it Work?
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In light of the debate surrounding organ donation, this paper argues that it is a necessary procedure that needs to be embraced by potential donors and patients. Kidneys, corneas, heart, lungs, liver, intestines, and several other body parts of living or deceased people can be donated to those in need May 20, · 10 Lines on Essay on Organ Donation in English Organ donation is an extremely advanced and exceptional way of curing fatal diseases. It happens by removing a part of an organ from the donor’s body and transplanting it to the recipient’s Estimated Reading Time: 6 mins Organ transplantation raises a number of significant ethical issues ranging from how living and deceased donors become donors and how organs are allocated. The number of patients who could benefit from transplantation far exceeds the number of organs available despite efforts to increase the number of organs available, a circumstance that raises important ethical questions
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