Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:29:28.350Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Non-Heart-Beating Cadaver Procurement and the Work of Ethics Committees

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2009

Bethany Spielman
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Medical Humanities and Medical Jurisprudence at Southern Illinois University Schools of Medicine and Law.
Steve Verhulst
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor in the Division of Statistics and Research Consultants, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine.

Extract

Recent ethics literature suggests that issues involved in non-heart-beating (NHB) organ procurement are both highly charged and rather urgent. Some fear that NHB is a public relations disaster waiting to happen or that it will create a backlash against organ donation. The purpose of the study described below was to assess ethics committees' current level of involvement in and readiness for addressing the difficult issues that NHB organ retrieval raises—either proactively through policy development or concurrently through ethics consultation.

Type
Special Section: Healthcare Ethics Committees and Consultants: The State of the Art
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Arnold, RM, Youngner, SJ, Schapiro, R, Spicer, CM, eds. Procuring Organs for Transplant: The Debate over Non-Heart-Beating Cadaver Protocols. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.Google Scholar

2. American Medical Association, Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs. Principal Issues in the Procurement of Organs Following Cardiac Death: The Pittsburgh Protocol. Chicago: American Med ical Association, 1994.Google Scholar

3. Wolf, ZR. Nurses' responses to organ procurement from nonheartbeating cadaver donors. AORN Journal 1994;60:968–81.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

4. Youngner, SJ, Arnold, RM. Ethical, psychosocial, and public policy implications of procuring organs from non-heart-beating cadaver donors. JAMA 1993;269:2769–74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

5. Spielman, B, ed. Organ Transplantation: Ethical, Legal, and Policy Issues. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996:7988.Google Scholar

6. DeVita, MA. Reflections on non-heart-beating organ donation: how three years' experience affected the University of Pittsburgh's ethics committee's action. Cambridge Quarterly of Health care Ethics 1996:5;285–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Fox, RC. Trial and error ethics: experimenting with non-heart-beating cadaver organ donation. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 1996;5:292.Google Scholar

8. Fox, RC. An ignoble form of cannibalism: reflections on the Pittsburgh protocol for procuring organs from non-heart-beating cadavers. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 1993;3:231–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

9. Fox, RC, Christakis, NA. Perish and publish: non-heart-beating organ donation and unduly iterative ethical review. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 1995;335:42.Google Scholar

10. Youngner, SJ, Arnold, RM. Non-heart-beating cadavers: the beat goes on. In: Spielman, B, ed. Organ Transplantation: Ethical, Legal, and Policy Issues. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996:6978.Google Scholar

11. Caplan, AL. The telltale heart: public policy and the utilization of non-heart-beating donors. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 1993;3:251–62.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

12. Spielman, B, McCarthy, CS. Beyond Pittsburgh: protocols for controlled non-heart-beating cadaver organ recovery. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 1995;5:323–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

13. Frader, JE. Non-heart-beating organ donation: personal and institutional conflicts of interest. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 1993;3:189–98.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

14. Schwartz, R, Kushner, T. The role of institutional and community based ethics committees in the debate on euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 1996;5:121–30.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

15. The notion of ethics as an elegant distraction is borrowed from Moreno, JD. Is ethics consulta tion an elegant distraction? HEC Forum 1996;8:12–21, at 14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar