Use of Regitine During Transplants
As of February 2000 there were in the United States 67,340 people waiting for organ transplants.8 In 1998, 4,855 Americans on that list died waiting.8 Against this backdrop of critical need, physicians in Wisconsin are using a controversial drug, Regitine, to preserve organs from patients on life support who still have brain activity, but who are not expected to survive their injury or illness.4 These donors, who typically die of cardiac arrest following the removal of life-sustaining technologies, are called non-heart-beating donors (NHBDs) and differ from traditional "brain-dead" donors in that the cessation of heart beat is sufficient to declare death and begin organ removal.3
According to the non-heart-beating donor (NHBD) protocol, transplant surgeons turn off a patient's respirator in an operating room. The patient is then injected with Regitine, which does not benefit him, but helps preserve his organs by increasing oxygen flow to them. This increased flow to the major organs results in a large general drop in blood pressure. Two minutes after the patient's heart ceases to beat, he is declared dead and organ removal begins.9 Critics, including Wisconsin prosecutor Carmen Marino, contend that the temporary loss in blood pressure caused by Regitine hastens death and that therefore transplant surgeons are killing patients to get their organs.4
While I agree that upholding strict transplant ethics is important, I here argue that the fully informed use of Regitine is acceptable, even if Regitine hastens death several minutes. If a patient (or immediate family members) has consented to organ donation, understands the effects of Regitine, and gives consent f...
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6. Rothman, D. 1996. "Bodily Integrity and the Socially Disadvantaged: The traffic in Organs for Transplantation." In Organ and Tissue Donation; Ethical, legal, and policy issues. Speilman, B. (ed.).
7. Spielman, B. (ed.) 1996. Organ and Tissue Donation; Ethical, legal, and policy issues. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
8. Veatch, R. 2000. Transplantation Ethics. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press
9. Weiss, R. "Demand for Organs Fosters Aggressive Collection Methods." The Washington Post, November 24, 1997.
10. Youngner, S., and Fox, R. 1996. Organ Transplantation Meanings and Realities. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.
11. Youngner, S. and Arnold, R. "Ethical, psychosocial, and public policy implications of procuring organs from non-heart-beating donors. JAMA, 1993; 269(21): 2769-2774.
According to Saunders, the primary value of organ donation is instrumental rather than expressive. Saunders goes on to discuss that from an instrumental perspective, what matters is
First of all, we can assess issues concerning the donor. For example, is it ever ethically acceptable to weaken one person’s body to benefit another? It has to be said that the practiced procedures are not conducted in the safest of ways, which can lead to complications for both donors and recipients (Delmonico 1416). There are also questions concerning of informed consent: involved donors are not always properly informed about the procedure and are certainly not always competent to the point of fully grasping the situation (Greenberg 240). Moral dilemmas arise for the organ recipient as well. For instance, how is it morally justifiable to seek and purchase organs in foreign countries? Is it morally acceptable to put oneself in a dangerous situation in order to receive a new organ? Some serious safety issues are neglected in such transactions since the procedures sometimes take place in unregulated clinics (Shimazono 959). There is also the concept of right to health involved in this case (Loriggio). Does someone’s right to health have more value than someone else’s? Does having more money than someone else put your rights above theirs? All of these questions have critical consequences when put into the context of transplant tourism and the foreign organ trade. The answers to these questions are all taken into account when answering if it is morally justifiable to purchase
Gregory exposes and informs the audience that there are thousands of people that are dying and suffering as a result of not being able to receive transplants. Persuasively, Gregory is pushing and convincing readers to open their eyes and agree that there should be a legal market in organ selling and that people should be compensated for their donation. The author approaches counterarguments such as the market will not be fair and the differences between a liberalist’s and conservative’s views on organ selling. Liberal claims like “my body, my choice” and the Conservative view of favoring free markets are what is causing controversy to occur. Gregory suggests that these studies “show that this has become a matter of life and death” (p 452, para 12). Overall, Anthony Gregory makes great claims and is successful in defending them. He concludes with “Once again, humanitarianism is best served by the respect for civil liberty, and yet we are deprived both… just to maintain the pretense of state-enforced propriety” (p 453, para 15). In summary, people are deprived of both humanitarianism and civil liberty all because of the false claim of state-enforced behaviors considered to be appropriate or correct. As a result, lives are lost and human welfare is at
I learned a lot about Deaf people, ASL, and/or Deaf Culture after reading this book. Deaf people are normal just like anybody else and they should not be treated any differently. Some people treat Deafness as a disease that needs to be cured, but it's not. If a parent comes to learn that their child is deaf they react very crazily and act like their child is dying and that deafness is some fatal disease. Deaf people should be treated just like anyone else and no differently. They are not disabled and can do great things in this world.
Thesis: I will explain the history of organ transplants, starting with ancient ideas before modern science until the 21st century.
Wolfe, R., Merion, R., Roys, E., & Port, F. (2009). Trends in Organ Donation and Transplantation in the United States, 1998-2007. American Journal of Transplantation , 9, 869-878.
The book "Death Be Not Proud," written by John Gunther, is the story of author John Gunther's son Johnny. Gunther writes this book in memory of his son. Gunther focuses on three main aspects that outline Johnny's life and the type of individual he was. The three main focuses Gunther depicts are: Johnny's mental and physical characteristics as those of an adolescent and an adult, his bravery and strength of will, and his distinctiveness of devotion to life.
When medical care providers are forced to make decisions and these decisions “violate one of the four principles of medical ethics” so that they can adhere to another of these principles this is considered an ethical dilemma (“Medical Ethics & the Rationing of Health Care: Introduction”, n.d., p. 1). Bioethicists refer to the healthcare ethics four principles in their merits evaluation and medical procedure difficulties as transplants. Organ and or transplant allocation policies has a mixture of legal, ethical, scientific and many others, however the focus here will be to show how the four ethical principles, autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice, applies to transplant allocation (Childress, 2001, p. 5).
In February 2003, 17-year-old Jesica Santillan received a heart-lung transplant at Duke University Hospital that went badly awry because, by mistake, doctors used donor organs from a patient with a different blood type. The botched operation and subsequent unsuccessful retransplant opened a discussion in the media, in internet chat rooms, and in ethicists' circles regarding how we, in the United States, allocate the scarce commodity of organs for transplant. How do we go about allocating a future for people who will die without a transplant? How do we go about denying it? When so many are waiting for their shot at a life worth living, is it fair to grant multiple organs or multiple transplants to a person whose chance for survival is slim to none? And though we, as compassionate human beings, want to help everyone, how far should our benevolence extend beyond our borders? Are we responsible for seeing that the needy who come to America for help receive their chance, or are we morally responsible to our own citizens only?
Throughout history physicians have faced numerous ethical dilemmas and as medical knowledge and technology have increased so has the number of these dilemmas. Organ transplants are a subject that many individuals do not think about until they or a family member face the possibility of requiring one. Within clinical ethics the subject of organ transplants and the extent to which an individual should go to obtain one remains highly contentious. Should individuals be allowed to advertise or pay for organs? Society today allows those who can afford to pay for services the ability to obtain whatever they need or want while those who cannot afford to pay do without. By allowing individuals to shop for organs the medical profession’s ethical belief in equal medical care for every individual regardless of their ability to pay for the service is severely violated (Caplan, 2004).
Oz (New York Heart Transplant surgeon) says “they (the families of the brain dead patient) can’t deal with the fear, however irrational, that the true end of their loved one will come when the heart is removed” (Dr. Oz, 7). This premise leads up to the main claim since it states why there aren’t enough donors in the world and why there is a long transplant waiting list too. Also it helps explain that even though the patient is brain dead, you should still treat them as a patient and have some
This assignment will consist of a twenty-page paper about the process of organ transplant surgery and a comparative analysis of organ procurement procedure in the United States and other developed countries. The research paper will include the bioethical issues of organ procurement.
Santarossa, B. (2004, January 13). Diamonds: Adding lustre to the Canadian economy. Retrieved November 06, 2017, from https://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-621-m/11-621-m2004008-eng.htm
Cecil Rhodes created De Beers, which became the owner of most of the diamond mines in South Africa. De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd., was formed in 1888. This created a monopoly on all production and distribution of diamonds in South Africa . Many other diamond suppliers joined forces with De Beers as to create scarcity of diamonds, once again, as to increase their price. De Beers and its Central Selling Organization established exclusive contracts with producers and consumers, which made it impossible to trade diamonds outside of the De Beers Empire. De Beers would determine the price and quantity of diamonds for the year. Therefore each one of its producers would receive a part of the total output to be sold at the predetermined price. When the monopoly was threatened through the discovery of diamonds in other countries, De Beers bought the diamonds increased their inventory and therefore their complete control through funneling all sales through single channel. When rebellions against De Beers occurred, th...
One of the most important and prevalent issues in healthcare discussed nowadays is the concern of the organ donation shortage. As the topic of organ donation shortages continues to be a growing problem, the government and many hospitals are also increasingly trying to find ways to improve the number of organ donations. In the United States alone, at least 6000 patients die each year while on waiting lists for new organs (Petersen & Lippert-Rasmussen, 2011). Although thousands of transplant candidates die from end-stage diseases of vital organs while waiting for a suitable organ, only a fraction of eligible organ donors actually donate. Hence, the stark discrepancy in transplantable organ supply and demand is one of the reasons that exacerbate this organ donation shortage (Parker, Winslade, & Paine, 2002). In the past, many people sought the supply of transplantable organs from cadaver donors. However, when many ethical issues arose about how to determine whether someone is truly dead by either cardiopulmonary or neurological conditions (Tong, 2007), many healthcare professionals and transplant candidates switched their focus on obtaining transplantable organs from living donors instead. As a result, in 2001, the number of living donors surpassed the number of cadaver donors for the first time (Tong, 2007).