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Child Organ Donation, Family Autonomy, and Intimate Attachments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2004

LYNN A. JANSEN
LYNN A. JANSEN
Affiliation:
Lynn A. Jansen, R.N., Ph.D., is Senior Ethicist at the John J. Conley Department of Ethics, St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan, and Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Medicine at New York Medical College, Valhalla
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Extract

What standard or principle should guide decisionmaking concerning the permissibility of allowing children to be organ donors? For a long time, it has been widely assumed that the best interest of the child is the appropriate standard. But recently, several critics have charged that this standard fails to give due weight to the interests of the family and the intimate relationships that the family makes possible.1,2 This article reviews and rejects both the best-interest standard (as it has been traditionally conceived) and the alternative standard recommended by the critics. I then propose a new standard to help parents, healthcare professionals, and judges decide when it is and is not permissible for children to serve as organ donors. This new standard modifies and broadens the best-interest standard to allow it to account adequately for the contribution that intimate relationships make to the well-being of children.

Type
SPECIAL SECTION: CHILDREN AS ORGAN DONORS
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , April 2004 , pp. 133 - 142
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

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