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On harm thresholds and living organ donation: must the living donor benefit, on balance, from his donation?

For the majority of scholars concerned with the ethics of living organ donation, inflicting moderate harms on competent volunteers in order to save the lives or increase the life chances of others is held to be justifiable provided certain conditions are met. These conditions tend to include one, or...

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Autor principal: Williams, Nicola Jane
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5814517/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28527046
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11019-017-9778-x
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author Williams, Nicola Jane
author_facet Williams, Nicola Jane
author_sort Williams, Nicola Jane
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description For the majority of scholars concerned with the ethics of living organ donation, inflicting moderate harms on competent volunteers in order to save the lives or increase the life chances of others is held to be justifiable provided certain conditions are met. These conditions tend to include one, or more commonly, some combination of the following: (1) The living donor provides valid consent to donation. (2) Living donation produces an overall positive balance of harm–benefit for donors and recipients which cannot be obtained in a less harmful manner. (3) Donation is not liable to cause significant and long-term morbidity to, or the death of, the donor. This paper critically examines the suggestion that these criteria are not sufficient to offer a general account of justified living organ donation in the context of competent volunteers and that key to justified living organ donation is that donors receive sufficient benefits from their donation that these outweigh the harms they suffer. However, although this view—termed here ‘The Donor Benefit Standard’—directs welcome attention to the many and complex motives which may underlie living organ donation, this paper ultimately concludes that given the threats this position poses to individual autonomy and the lives of those in need of organ transplants ‘The Donor Benefit Standard’ should ultimately be rejected.
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spelling pubmed-58145172018-02-26 On harm thresholds and living organ donation: must the living donor benefit, on balance, from his donation? Williams, Nicola Jane Med Health Care Philos Scientific Contribution For the majority of scholars concerned with the ethics of living organ donation, inflicting moderate harms on competent volunteers in order to save the lives or increase the life chances of others is held to be justifiable provided certain conditions are met. These conditions tend to include one, or more commonly, some combination of the following: (1) The living donor provides valid consent to donation. (2) Living donation produces an overall positive balance of harm–benefit for donors and recipients which cannot be obtained in a less harmful manner. (3) Donation is not liable to cause significant and long-term morbidity to, or the death of, the donor. This paper critically examines the suggestion that these criteria are not sufficient to offer a general account of justified living organ donation in the context of competent volunteers and that key to justified living organ donation is that donors receive sufficient benefits from their donation that these outweigh the harms they suffer. However, although this view—termed here ‘The Donor Benefit Standard’—directs welcome attention to the many and complex motives which may underlie living organ donation, this paper ultimately concludes that given the threats this position poses to individual autonomy and the lives of those in need of organ transplants ‘The Donor Benefit Standard’ should ultimately be rejected. Springer Netherlands 2017-05-19 2018 /pmc/articles/PMC5814517/ /pubmed/28527046 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11019-017-9778-x Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Scientific Contribution
Williams, Nicola Jane
On harm thresholds and living organ donation: must the living donor benefit, on balance, from his donation?
title On harm thresholds and living organ donation: must the living donor benefit, on balance, from his donation?
title_full On harm thresholds and living organ donation: must the living donor benefit, on balance, from his donation?
title_fullStr On harm thresholds and living organ donation: must the living donor benefit, on balance, from his donation?
title_full_unstemmed On harm thresholds and living organ donation: must the living donor benefit, on balance, from his donation?
title_short On harm thresholds and living organ donation: must the living donor benefit, on balance, from his donation?
title_sort on harm thresholds and living organ donation: must the living donor benefit, on balance, from his donation?
topic Scientific Contribution
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5814517/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28527046
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11019-017-9778-x
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