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Solid Organ Donation Between Strangers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Lainie Friedman Ross
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Extract

In August 2000, Arthur Matas and his colleagues de scribed a protocol in which their institution began to accept as potential donors, individuals who came to the University of Minnesota hospital offering to donate a kidney to any patient on the waiting list. Matas and his colleagues refer to these donors as nondirected donors by which is meant that the donors are altruistic and that they give their organs to an unspecified pool of recipients with whom they have no emotional relationship. This paper represents an ethical and policy critique of the nondirected donation protocol that was implemented at the University of Minnesota in August 1999. Specifically, I address the ethical questions: Whether altruistic living solid organ donations by strangers (nondirected donations) should be permitted? And if so, What are appropriate ethical guidelines for such donations?

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , Fall 2002 , pp. 440 - 445
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2002

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References

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