Ethical Concerns In Human Organ Transplantation Essay Paper

Please rewrite the definition argument essay titled \”c\” . Please use the previously written attached essay. Please follow the instruction for the Definition Essay Assignment. It needs to be 1500 – 1750 word essay. Please title the essay \”Ethical Concerns In Human Organ Transplantation\”.Please use this essay, same information to write the new essay, just make sure it is an argument essay. Make sure to use at least 10 resources. I will also provide the \”Rewrite as argument essay\” . use these two essays to write the new essay. Make sure it is an argument definition essay.
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Ethical Concerns In Human Organ Transplantation

Human organ transplantation is perhaps one of the most important ‘miracles’ of modern medicine in the 20^th century. In 1954, the seemingly impossible dream of replacing a dying or dead organ with a healthy organ from a donor became a reality. On 23^rd December, 1954, Drs. John Merrill and Joseph Murray become pioneers in organ transplant medicine by successfully transplanting a kidney at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. The transplant recipient and donor were monozygotic twins, and this genetic similarity was considered a factor in the operation’s success that allowed the recipient to live for eight more years. After many years of experiments, this duo of doctors conducted the first successful organ transplant operation, a truly miraculous event. It marked the advent of the transplantation era that has since been hailed as an extraordinary leap in medical science. Although it presented a momentous leap in medical science, transplant science offers a concern with regards to the ethical problem of taking an organ from a healthy individual and risking that life to save the life of the recipient (Peterchik, 2006). Thus, organ transplantation offers an opportunity to save the lives of organ recipients, but presents unique ethical concerns.

As the medical industry addresses its primary concern of making sick persons well, organ transplantation causes a qualitative shift in their objectives when the lives of health persons (organ donors) are risked. This concern presents irrespective of the motives, whether they are pure or not. In this case, acquiring the organ involves invading a healthy body to acquire an organ (Foran, 2013). Beyond the ethical concern of risking the life of healthy donors, there is an ethical concern over how the organ was obtained. Organs obtained from relatives raise the question over how donor consent was obtained without coercion. If the organ was obtained from a non-related donor, then the question becomes whether or not the donor should be compensated, how much should be offered as compensation, and if the compensation can be considered coercive influence. If the organ was obtained from a dead donor, then the question becomes what clinical evidence was presented of the donor’s death (Jensen, 2011). Other than the ethical questions over how consent was obtained, there is an ethical question over how to fairly select the organ recipients. Besides that, another ethical question would be how many organs should be harvested to represent a number that sufficiently meets the existing need. It is not difficult to acknowledge that these concerns that have been raised about organ transplantation are ethically problematic (Jensen, 2011).  Ethical Concerns In Human Organ Transplantation Essay Paper

These concerns are sharply distinguished when the organ occurs in the body as a single organ, particularly the heart. Removing a healthy kidney from a living donor can be partially justified by the fact that a healthy donor would have two kidneys presenting as a paired organ and life would continue with one organ. However, donation of a viable heart definitely ends the life of the donor. If we talk of the donor being dead before donating the heart, the question then becomes how to define death. Should we talk of death as when the heart ceases to function, in which case it would no longer be a viable organ. If we talk of coma and brain death as good criteria for determining the ‘death’ of heart donors, then the question becomes how sure are we that the donor will not recover from the coma as this has been documented to occur. This takes us back to the question of under which clinical conditions should a heart be removed from the donor (Miller & Truog, 2012). The medical fraternity has attempted to address this question by defining death as irreversible coma and flat encephalogram evidenced by no reflexes, lack of breathing and movement, and unresponsiveness. However, this does not unequivocally answer the question and creates room for ambiguity. It does not clearly distinguish between death and persistent vegetative state. Rather, it designates when persistent vegetative state should be considered as death and handled as such. The criteria for death among organ donor has since then been refined to include irreversible cessation of brain, respiratory and circulatory functions as indications of death. Still, it is important to note that this is an ongoing debate between ethicists and the medical fraternity (Miller & Truog, 2012).

The debate over how to define death among organ donors has not halted transplantation activities. However, organ transplantation activities have raised concerns about the failure of these organs to prolong life and whether the benefits truly exceed the costs. Of the first 160 heart transplants conducted around the world in the late 1960s, only 10 recipients survived for more than one year, implying a 6.25% survival rate among recipients. While this figure caused enthusiasm to wane at the time with a pause on transplant surgeries until the mid-1970s, conviction remained remain high among the medical fraternity. This was based on the awareness that better selection of recipients and procedures as well as better immunosuppressive medication would turn into a life sustaining intervention allowing the recipients to live for longer without experiencing organ failure (Abdeldayem, El-Kased & El-Sharaawy, 2016). The five-year pause on transplant surgeries represented a truly ethical action. The medical fraternity understood that the transplant surgeries represented a miracle for those who survived, but they voluntarily ceased all actions and proceeded to refine the technique to improve the recipient survival rates. They ensured that the miracle was not merely a public relations gimmick, but that it turned into a true boon for the organ recipients. Throughout organ transplantation history, there have been similar pauses although less dramatic. These pauses sought to reconsider recipient selection and medical techniques after realizing that the medical fraternity has the ethical imperative to do no harm and be of benefit (Abdeldayem, El-Kased & El-Sharaawy, 2016).

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In the midst of these ethical concerns is the major issue of viable transplant organs being scarce. The reality is that there are fewer viable organs that the number of patients who require these organs: needs exceeds supply. This scarcity has created new economic, social and ethical concerns with regards to transplant organs procurement. Stakeholders have sought to address these concerns through presenting two principles government organ procurement. The first principle is that an organ must be donated through explicit instructions of the donor who can either be dead or living. The second principle is that no financial compensation should be offered to the donors, except to cover their medical costs. The two principles characterize the prevailing ethos on organ transplantation. They seek to advance the spirit of volunteerism and altruism to ensure common good even as exploitation of healthy poor and commercialization of organs is prevented, and organ distribution equality is promoted (Beard, Kaserman & Osterkamp, 2013).

Still, organs supply remains a persistent issue. Even with explicit criteria for ensuring that transplant organs are identified and fairly distributed among recipients to address their medical needs, patients’ evaluation for suitability remains a problem. The patient evaluation criteria includes the capacity to comply with the transplant regiment, an appraisal approach that presents opportunities for clinical bias when medical personnel who recommend recipients intentionally skew medical data to favor specific recipients who would then go top of the transplant list. Another challenge that is slowly emerging from this issue is organ tourism that sees patients in need travel to countries with deficient medical services and less stringent transplant regulations to get organs before returning to their countries of origin to re-enter an already burdened health care system (Tsouflas, 2018).

This evaluation reveals that organ transplant presents many concerns that have an ethical basis. To be more precise, organ transplantation is an extraordinary step in medical science. However, unlike other medical advances, the activity has the special feature of not only involving patients (recipients) and medical personnel, but also the organ and the donor. It becomes clear that organs are precious resources that could be lost to potential recipients who truly need them if not efficiently used. It is this complicated network (medical personnel, organ, donor and recipient) that makes organ transplantation a unique medical activity (Adamo et al., 2014).

One must accept that organ transplant represents a major advance in medical science, through offering persons with failed organs the opportunity to get healthy organs. In addition, one must acknowledge that organ transplantation presents some ethical concerns. The first ethical concern is how to justify the health risk that living donors bear when a healthy organ is removed. The second ethical concern is how the organ was obtained in terms of consent and if coercion was used. The third ethical concern is how to fairly select the organ recipients. The fourth ethical concern is how to define ‘death’ when harvesting organs. The fifth ethical concern is whether organ transplantation is truly worth it in terms of cost/benefit analysis since survival rate is low. The sixth ethical concern is opportunities for organ distribution inequality, exploitation of healthy poor and commercialization of organs. The seventh ethical concern is how to ensure a suitable supply of adequate organs as well as organ tourism. Addressing the presented ethical concerns would make organ transplant a more acceptable activity. In this respect, organ transplantation offers an opportunity to save the lives of organ recipients, but presents unique ethical concerns.

References

Abdeldayem, H., El-Kased, A. & El-Shaarawy, A. (ed) (2016). Frontiers in transplantology. Rijeka: InTech Publishers.

Asano, T., Fukushima, N., Kenmochi, T. & Matsuno, N. (eds) (2014). Marginal donors: current and future trends. Tokyo: Springer.

Beard, R., Kaserman, D. & Osterkamp, R. (2013). The global organ shortage: economic causes, human consequences, policy responses. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Foran, R. (2013). Organ transplants. Minneapolis, MN: ABDO Publishing Company.

Jensen, S. (ed) (2011). The ethics of organ transplantation. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press.

Miller, F. & Truog, R. (2012). Death, Dying, and Organ Transplantation: Reconstructing Medical Ethics at the end of life. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Petechuk, D. (2006). Organ transplantation. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Tsoulfas, G. (ed) (2018). Organ donation and transplantation: current status and future challenges. London: Intech Open.  Ethical Concerns In Human Organ Transplantation Essay Paper