Ethical Health Care Issues: Organ Transplant Allocation
University of Phoenix
HCS 545 Health Care Law and Ethics
Louise Underhahl
July 23, 2012

Ethical Health Care Issues: Organ Transplant Allocation One of the areas that is currently affecting the United States is the ethical issue of organ transplant allocation. Since the first single lung transplant in 1983 and then the first double lung transplant in 1986 there have been thousands of people who have lived because of the surgery. One must examine, evaluate, and apply the four ethical principles to Organ transplant allocation to look at the ethical issues involved. Once must look at the fact that not every patient who would benefit from a transplant will receive one in time …show more content…

The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network and its 66 regional organ procurement centers require all Medicare and Medicaid Hospitals to belong to the network. Transplant potential recipients can be put on several regional lists if they have enough financial means. The ethical principle Justice focuses on social distribution of benefits and burdens and what is fair, equitable and rational. Transplant Ethics (2010) reports that “in most countries of the world, it is illegal to sell ones organs and this includes for payment in the form of employment, cars, etc” (p. 1). Many Americans have criticized the use of local and regional organ transplant lists and think there should be a local and national listing, which would allocate locally first but would also look at potential recipients in the whole nation to achieve a fairer policy. Justice would also be just to look at the retransplantation of a person who has already had a transplant of an organ or organs when there are others still waiting to have a first transplant. McCarrick (2010) ethically reports “Can’t we count? Pointing out that if one child has seven organ transplants, seven others receive none. I recommend that each person only have based on the observation of low survival statistics in persons who are retransplanted “(p. 4). Organ Transplant Allocation is an issue that is currently affecting the United States in an ethical way. A term called principlism has