essay on organ donation a step towards serving humanity

Essay on Organ Donation for Students and Children

500+ words essay on organ donation.

Essay on Organ Donation – Organ donation is a process in which a person willingly donates an organ of his body to another person. Furthermore, it is the process of allowing the removal of one’s organ for its transplanting in another person. Moreover, organ donation can legally take place by the consent of the donor when he is alive. Also, organ donation can also take place by the assent of the next of kin of a dead person. There has been a significant increase in organ donations due to the advancement of medical science.

Organ Donation in Different Countries

First of all, India follows the opt-in system regarding organ donation. Furthermore, any person wishing to donate an organ must fill a compulsory form. Most noteworthy, this form is available on the website of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare Government of India. Also, The Transplantation of Human Organs Act 1994, controls organ donation in India.

The need for organ donation in the United States is growing at a considerable rate. Furthermore, there has also been a significant rise in the number of organ donors in the United States. Most noteworthy, organ donation in the United States takes place only by the consent of the donor or their family. Nevertheless, plenty of organizations are pushing for opt-out organ donation

Within the European Union, the regulation of organ donation takes place by the member states. Furthermore, many European countries have some form of an opt-out system. Moreover, the most prominent opt-out systems are in Austria, Spain, and Belgium. In England, no consent is presumed and organ donation is a voluntary process.

Argentina is a country that has plenty of awareness regarding organ donation. Most noteworthy, the congress of Argentina introduced an opt-out organ donation policy. Moreover, this means that every person over 18 years of age will be a donor unless they or their family state their negative. However, in 2018, another law was passed by congress. Under the new law, the family requirement was removed. Consequently, this means that the organ donor is the only person who can state their negative.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Benefits of Organ Donation

First of all, organ donation is very helpful for the grieving process. Furthermore, many donor families take relief and consolation due to organ donation. This is because they understand that their loved one has helped save the life of other people. Most noteworthy, a single donor can save up to eight lives.

Organ donation can also improve the quality of life of many people. An eye transplant could mean the ability to see again for a blind person. Similarly, donating organs could mean removing the depression and pain of others. Most noteworthy, organ donation could also remove the dependency on costly routine treatments.

Organ donation is significantly beneficial for medical science research. Donated organs offer an excellent tool for conducting scientific researches and experiments. Furthermore, many medical students can greatly benefit from these organs. Most noteworthy, beneficial medical discoveries could result due to organ donation. Organ donation would also contribute to the field of Biotechnology.

To sum it up, organ donation is a noble deed. Furthermore, it shows the contribution of an individual even after death. Most noteworthy, organ donation can save plenty of lives. Extensive awareness regarding organ donation must certainly be spread among the people.

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

• Travelling Essay
• Picnic Essay
• Our Country Essay
• My Parents Essay
• Essay on Favourite Personality
• Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
• Essay on Knowledge is Power
• Essay on Gurpurab
• Essay on My Favourite Season
• Essay on Types of Sports

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download the App

Essay on Organ Donation for Students and Children in 1000 Words

In this article, read an essay on organ donation for students and children in 1000 words. It includes meaning, celebration of organ donation day, process, demand, and black market of organ donation.

Table of Contents

Essay on Organ Donation (1000 Words)

Organ donation is a significant donation. It is also said a “reward for life” in other words. By doing this, we can give life to many people.

Nowadays, many prostitutes help in donating organs, encourage it. Nowadays, organs like kidneys, eyes, liver, heart, small intestine, skin tissue are in high demand.

Thousands of people die in an accident in the country every day whose organ donation gives life to other people. Most of the extracted organs are transplanted within 6 to 72 hours. One donor can save eight lives. Donations of liver, kidney, lungs, pancreas, and intestine can be made while alive.

Also read: Essay on Corruption Free India

What is organ donation?

Organ donation is a process in which healthy organs and tissues are taken from a human being (dead and sometimes even alive). Then these organs are transplanted to another needy person. In this way, the life of another person can be saved with organ donation. Organ Donation by One Person Donation made by one person can help 50 needy people.

Organ Donation in India

In India, the percentage of organ donation is deficient according to the population. Every year 5 lakh people in the country die due to lack of organs at the right time. In this, 2 lakh people die due to liver disease. Fifty thousand people die due to vision sickness.

Organ Donation Day Celebration

Organ donation day is celebrated on 13 August every year in government, non-governmental organizations. Institutions such as Gift Ek Jeevan, Mohan Foundation, Gift Your Organ Foundation, Dadhichi Dehdaan Samiti help in organ donation. Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Delhi NCR, Punjab are the most donating states in the country.

Major Organs to Donate

Kidney, liver, intestine, blood vessel, intoxication, skin, bones, ligaments (ligaments) heart, pancreas, heart valves (soft bone), blood, platelets, tissue, the cornea (cornea), tendons.

Problems In Organ Donations

The rule is that in the event of a road accident, only those who died in the hospital can be taken part of their logo. Many people die at the accident site. In such a situation, no part can be found from them.

People are not aware yet. Consider it wrong. Many people do not even register to donate organs during their lifetime. People suffering from cancer, AIDS, infection, sepsis, or any serious illness cannot give an organ.

Organ donation process

A. living organ donor.

Comprehensive medical investigations are required before donating organs to living donors. It also includes the psychological evaluation of the donor to ensure that he or she understands the consequences of the donation and wants to consent to it.

b. Dead donor

With deceased donors, it is first verified whether or not the donor is dead. Death is usually confirmed many times by neuro physicians when it is determined that any part of it can be donated.

After death, they placed the body on a mechanical ventilator to ensure that the organ remains in good condition. Most organs function outside the body for only a few hours and thus ensure that they reach the recipient immediately after removal from the body.

Difference between demand and supply

The need for physical organs is much higher than the number of donors around the world. Every year many patients die while waiting for donors.

Statistics show that the average annual kidney demand in India is two lakhs, while only 6 thousand kidneys are received. Similarly, the average annual market for the heart is 50 thousand, whereas only 15 are available.

I order to increase the number of donors for organs; there is a need to create awareness among the public for donating organs.

Towards this end, the government has also taken some steps like spreading awareness through TV and the Internet, though we still have a long way to go to bridge the gap between demand and supply.

The black market of organs selling

On the one hand, where we are promoting organ donation, its theft has also happened a lot. Nowadays, the theft and black marketing of organs has increased in India.

In government-private hospitals, patients’ kidneys (kidneys), and other organs are being stolen from the nexus of the doctors.

Fake Organization

Many such organizations are active in many states who steal the organs of innocent spears. Such theft is done during the operation.

The organs are sold in foreign patients at high prices. A case of fraud continues to be exposed every day. Weak, vulnerable sections become the most victims of it.

People with plentiful money are ready to pay any cost to the limbs to save their lives. Doctors also keep stealing organs by being lured by money. Thousands of foreign patients come to our country every year, which has some part or two.

Flexibility in Law

Taking advantage of the flexible law of organ transplantation in the country, such people gain organs corruptly. Some poor patients sell their organs for money, but some are fraudulently removed.

Price of organs in the black market

Kidney – 5 to 10 lakhs Bone marrow – 2.5 million Surrogacy (rental womb) – 10 to 20 lakhs Lever – 5 to 10 lakh Heart – above 20 lakhs Cornea – 1.5 million One inch skin – according to 42 thousand rupees

What happens to organs?

Doctors quickly transplant these organs into any patients who have already needed them. Organ transplant hospitals have a waiting list. According to him, the organ is put in the patient whose number is there.

The blood group and many other tests are done for matching while performing the organ. If everything is fine, then the organ is put in, and if the match is not there, then it is matched with the next patient on the waiting list.

Time Duration for Transplant

• The liver should be transplanted within 6 hours of removal.
• The kidney should be taken within 12 hours.
• Eyes should be installed within three days.

Organ donation can save a person’s life. Its importance should not be ignored. A proper system should be encouraged to donate the organ. I hope you will like this essay on organ donation.

Leave a comment Cancel reply

• Table of Contents
• Random Entry
• Chronological
• Editorial Information
• About the SEP
• Editorial Board
• How to Cite the SEP
• Special Characters
• Advanced Tools
• Support the SEP
• PDFs for SEP Friends
• Make a Donation
• SEPIA for Libraries
• Entry Contents

Bibliography

Academic tools.

• Friends PDF Preview
• Author and Citation Info
• Back to Top

The Donation of Human Organs

Organ transplantation raises difficult ethical questions about people’s claims to determine what happens to their bodies before and after death. What are these claims? What would it be to respect them? How should they fit with the claims of organ donors’ families or the needs of people whose own organs have failed? And then how should organs be allocated? Who should get priority and why? As with other topics in applied ethics, satisfactory answers require knowing the relevant facts, in this case about organ transplantation.

In summary form, the following empirical claims about organ transplantation are widely accepted:

• Organ transplantation is a successful treatment for organ failure in many cases.
• Organ transplantation is cost-effective compared with other treatments for organ failure (Machnicki et al. 2006; Persad 2018 claims that transplantation is not cost-effective compared with life-saving treatments for other conditions besides organ failure).
• Most organ transplantation nowadays is routine, not experimental (Tilney 2003; Veatch and Ross 2015). The organs in question are the kidney, liver, heart, lung, pancreas, and intestine. This entry discusses only the “routine” cases. Experimental ones raise additional questions, but these are more properly dealt with as part of the entry on the ethics of clinical research . Present examples of experimental transplantation include faces and uteri (Bayefsky & Berman 2016; Freeman and Jaoudé 2007; Lotz 2018; O’Donovan, Williams, & S. Wilkinson 2019; Robertson 2016; Sandman 2018; S. Wilkinson & Williams 2015; Williams 2016).
• Transplant organs are often scarce. Many people who would benefit from receiving a transplant do not get one.

Organs are taken from the dead and the living. Each category raises separate problems and we begin with dead organ donors.

1.1 Organ retrieval in practice

1.2.1 encourage or mandate clearer choices by the deceased, 1.2.2 end the family’s power of veto, 1.2.3 change defaults so that organs are taken except when the deceased formally objected, 1.2.4 conscript organs, 1.2.5 further proposals, 2.1 “do no harm”, 2.2 valid consent, 2.3 the moral force of consent, 2.4 incompetent living donors, 3.1 the complexity of organ allocation, 3.2 self-inflicted illness and social value, 3.3 the interaction of allocation and donation, other internet resources, related entries, 1. organ retrieval from the dead.

The dead are the major sources of organs for transplantation. For a long time deceased donors came from those declared brain dead, that is, those who have irreversibly lost their brain function. In recent years, however, many donors have come from those who have died in the sense of circulatory death. Both donation after brain death and donation after circulatory death invite the important philosophical—not just medical—question “what is it to be dead”? (See the entry on the definition of death .)

Even though far more people die than require new organs, organs are scarce. Numerous factors affect the retrieval of organs from the dead. These include: the nature of people’s deaths (in only perhaps fewer than 1% of deaths can organs currently be taken, and countries vary according to the number of strokes, car crashes, shootings, and other causes of death that lend themselves to retrieval); the number of intensive care units (ICUs) (most donors die there and fewer ICUs makes for fewer donors); the medical factors that determine whether organs are retrieved successfully; the logistical factors that determine the efficient use of available organs; the extent of public awareness of transplantation; and the ethical-legal rules for consent that determine who is allowed to block or permit retrieval. Although most of these factors do not raise philosophical questions, it is important to realize that the main factor that does—the ethical-legal system for consent—is only one of many that affect retrieval rates, and nowhere near the most important at that. One should also bear in mind that the variety of factors plus unreliability or incomparability in statistics about retrieval mean that it is hard or impossible to have confidence in many of the causal claims about how consent rules affect retrieval rates.

This section explains the rules for consent as they operate in practice in most countries. It then outlines certain reform proposals, mentions the claims of the main affected parties, and, in the light of those claims, evaluates those reform proposals.

In nearly all countries with a transplantation program, the following is a broadly accurate description of organ retrieval in practice, although different countries, and regions of countries, do differ in nuanced ways, for instance in how the option of donation is presented to families; and the nuances may affect retrieval rates (T.M. Wilkinson 2011).

• If the deceased made a refusal known, either formally (e.g., on a register) or informally, organs will not be retrieved.
• If the family refuses, organs will not be retrieved.
• If the deceased is not known to have refused, suitable organs will be retrieved if the family agrees (some jurisdictions) or does not refuse (other jurisdictions).

The first point to make from this description is that nearly all countries have, in practice, a “double veto” system. Even if the family wants to donate, the deceased’s objection will veto retrieval. Even if the deceased agreed to donate, the family’s objection will veto retrieval. (The U.S. has partial exceptions discussed shortly.) The family’s veto is in many countries, such as the U.S., the U.K., and most nations of continental Europe, a creation of the medical profession. Doctors will not take organs from consenting dead people whose families object even though the law permits retrieval. A lesson in method follows: when describing the practice of organ retrieval, looking at the law alone is inadequate.

A vital second point is that the consent of the deceased is not required before organs may be taken. (Japan was the last major exception and permitted retrieval without the deceased’s consent from 2010 – see the link to the Japan Organ Transplant Network in the Other Internet Resources section below.) When the deceased has not refused, the family’s agreement is enough to permit retrieval.

1.2 Proposals for reform

The persistent scarcity of organs has given rise to several proposals to reform the system for consent. The main ones are:

• Encourage or mandate clearer choices by the deceased.
• End the family’s power of veto.
• Change defaults so that organs are taken except when the deceased formally objected.
• Conscript organs.
• Pay for organs.

(1)–(4) are discussed below; for (5), see the entry on the sale of human organs . Before evaluating the proposals, we describe the claims of the main affected parties. In determining what the rules for retrieval ought to be, three main claims are in play. These are the claims of the deceased, the deceased’s family, and potential recipients of organs. Transplant professionals have claims too, which are probably best thought of as matters of professional conscience, but these are not discussed further here.

The dead . The “claims of the dead over their bodies” is almost invariably shorthand for “the claims of the living over their post-mortem bodies”, and that is how it will be understood here. While it is widely accepted that living people have strong claims over their own bodies, especially when it comes to vetoing invasions of their bodily integrity, it is much less widely accepted that the dead have such claims. Among the views that the dead have claims, we may distinguish between those which hold that events after death can harm the interests of the formerly-living and those which hold that it is only the fears and concerns of the living that have weight. Thus if it is asked why we should attach weight to a person’s refusal of organ retrieval, the first sort of view may say “because to take the organ of a person who refused damages his interest” and the second sort may say “because the anticipation of retrieval against his wishes will be bad for the living person”. The first sort of view is the subject of posthumous interests (see the entry on death ).

Even if we accept that people may have posthumous interests, the content of those interests will often be unknown or indeterminate. Many people do not think about organ donation, which is quite reasonable given the low chance that they will die in such a way as to permit organ retrieval. In cases where they have not thought or not revealed their thoughts, it seems plausible to say that they have no interest to be taken into account in deciding whether to proceed with retrieval.

In some cases, the claims of the deceased will be in conflict with those of their families and/or the claims of potential recipients. The question arises of how to weigh the claims of the deceased. Some writers accept that the deceased can have posthumous interests, but believe them to be of little weight, particularly compared with the needs for organs of those with organ failure (Harris 2002, 2003). They may believe that people are not affected by their posthumous interests being set back or they may think the fear of retrieval is of little weight. In their view, any roughly consequentialist calculation would justify setting aside the objections of the deceased to organ retrieval. Other writers argue that if we accept posthumous interests and accept that people have strong claims over their bodies while alive, we have grounds to attribute rights to the living over their post-mortem bodies (T.M. Wilkinson 2011). Such a view needs to explain how posthumous rights are possible, since some writers in political and legal theory believe that rights could not protect posthumous interests for technical reasons to do with the nature of rights (Steiner 1994; Fabre 2008).

The family . If one accepts that the deceased have a claim, then families may acquire a claim by transfer. That is, the deceased may delegate decision-making power to their families, as is possible in some jurisdictions. Some authors have even suggested that the organs of the dead should be treated as something akin to inheritable property (Voo and Holm 2014). Acquiring a claim by transfer however is no more controversial than the deceased’s having a claim in the first place. What is the subject of dispute is whether the family should have a claim in their own right which could be set against the claims of the deceased or potential recipients.

Some argue for family decision-making on cultural grounds (Fan and Wang 2019). For them, giving priority to the deceased is unacceptably individualist either in all cases or in cases where individualism is culturally abnormal (Boddington 1998). Among the difficulties for such views is to explain why, if individualism is mistaken, the decision about retrieval should be made by individual families rather than in the interests of the wider community, which may well require taking organs against the families’ wishes so as to meet the needs of potential recipients.

If families were overridden, it is reasonable to suppose that they would suffer extra distress: that is, even more distress than they would already be experiencing upon the often untimely and unanticipated death of the relative. Few writers deny that avoiding distress would be a good reason, although some believe (without much evidence) that a norm of taking organs and overriding families’ opposition would come to be accepted (Harris 2003). What is controversial is how strong a claim the family would acquire not to be distressed.

Finally, families are not monolithic, and sometimes they disagree among themselves about whether to endorse organ retrieval. How internal disagreement affects the families is not widely discussed.

Potential recipients . As was said at the start of this entry, potential recipients stand to gain a great deal from receiving an organ in terms of both the quantity and quality of their lives. They are also badly off, in a medical sense, in that they suffer from organ failure. Utilitarian, prioritarian, and egalitarian views of justice and benevolence would, therefore, give considerable weight to the needs of potential recipients.

We now turn to consider the proposals for reform listed above.

According to some, an important cause of family refusal of organ retrieval is uncertainty about the wishes of the deceased. Families that do not know what their relatives wanted often default to “no” (den Hartogh 2008a). To avoid the default, some writers would encourage people to decide about donation in a way others will know, for instance by paying them (De Wispelaere and Stirton 2010) and others suggest mandating choice by, for instance, withholding driving licenses from those who do not choose. The suggestion is not, or not in all cases, that people be steered into agreeing to donate or penalized if they refuse. It is that people be steered to make clear choices, yes or no.

Some ethical questions are raised by penalizing people for not choosing or for introducing monetary encouragement. It may be replied that no one is pressured to donate, as opposed to choose; that the penalties or encouragement are slight; and that transplants are of such value to the needy that any ethical objections are easily overridden. The real difficulty is that mandated choice may not increase retrieval rates by much. In some places where it has been tried (such as the U.S. states of Virginia and Texas), people who are pressured to choose themselves default to “no” (den Hartogh 2008a). In New Zealand, where one must choose as a condition of getting a driving license, the choice is often ignored by intensive care doctors and families because it does not seem like a genuine decision.

Families usually have at least the de facto power to veto retrieval from the deceased, even those who adamantly wanted to donate their organs. Does this power not give excessive weight to the interests of families as against the interests of both the deceased and potential recipients (Liberman 2015; Zambrano 2017)?

As it happens, it appears that families rarely override the donors’ known wishes. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that many people would want to donate no matter how upset their families were, so allowing families to veto retrieval is unlikely to be against the all-things-considered wishes of many of the deceased.

In any case, transplant professionals have a practical reason not to override the family: they fear bad publicity. One version of their argument is this:

there are already urban myths about people having their deaths hastened so as to make their organs available; few people understand brain-death; donation would fall if families publicly claimed that their views were overridden and their relatives were not dead; thus ending the family veto would reduce the supply of organs, not increase it.

If the practical argument is correct, it is understandable why families have a medically-created power of veto. Moreover, it is hard to see that the veto is contrary to the claims of the deceased. While the deceased may have a claim to block retrieval, no one has a claim that other people use his or her organs. If the veto is in the interests of potential recipients, doctors may refuse the offer of organs by the deceased without infringing on the deceased’s claim (T.M. Wilkinson 2007a).

Some states in the U.S. have implemented “first person” consent laws that mandate overriding families in cases where the deceased has ticked the “donate” box or its equivalent on a form. It is unclear how far such laws are upheld. In principle, it might be possible to get some data on the effect of overriding families on the organ supply, thus testing the practical argument in the previous paragraphs. Ethically, first person consent laws arguably do not respect the wishes of the deceased, at least in cases where the deceased donors who ticked the box did not fully grasp that their families’ wishes would be overridden.

This proposal favors what is variously called “opt-out” or “presumed consent”. A “hard” version would take organs even when the deceased’s family objected (with all the problems mentioned in the previous sub-section); a “soft” version would allow the family to veto retrieval. The leading argument for opt-out claims that many people want to donate but through inertia do not get round to opting in. In an opt-out system, inertia would prevent them opting out so their organs could be taken and, since most people do want to donate, the deceased would be more likely to get what they want and more organs would be available (Thaler and Sunstein 2008).

The proposal envisages taking organs without the explicit consent of the deceased. One may object that people’s rights over their bodies establish a duty of non-interference which can be lifted only with the consent of the rightholder (Kluge 2000). A different objection points out that taking organs without consent would sometimes be against the wishes of the deceased; and while not taking would be against the wishes of the deceased who had wanted to donate, taking in error is a worse mistake than not taking in error, because people have a right not to have their organs taken but no right to have their organs taken (Veatch and Ross 2015; for criticism specifically of their views see den Hartogh 2019). As against these views, we must dispose of the bodies of the dead in some way, even if not consented to; and we give unconsented medical treatment to the unconscious even though some would have opposed treatment (Gill 2004; T.M. Wilkinson 2011).

Is it right to use the bodies of the deceased without either their consent or knowing that they had wanted the use? The question is an important and difficult one. It is very important to note, however, that this question is raised by virtually all existing organ procurement systems To restate: all systems allow organs to be taken without the deceased’s consent . It follows that the simple inertia argument for shifting defaults is flawed. There is no default of non-retrieval in the absence of the deceased’s consent. Other arguments for variations of opting out turn on the empirical question of effects on retrieval. Since many different factors affect retrieval rates, it is often hard to be confident about the difference that changes to consent would make.

The idea of conscription is to take organs in all suitable cases even when the deceased or family objected (except, perhaps, in cases of conscientious objection). Unlike the other reform proposals, conscription seems to have little political support. Nonetheless, some powerful philosophical arguments can be given for it. One argument, mentioned above, compares the strength of the interests of the deceased, families, and potential recipients, and claims that the need for transplants of those with organ failure is much greater than the needs of the deceased or their families (Kamm 1993; Harris 2002, 2003). Another argument draws an analogy with the relief of poverty. Many people think the state may use its coercive powers to transfer material resources from those with a surplus to those with little. In other words, we think that people have welfare rights to resources. One way to fulfill those rights is to tax the estates of the deceased. By parity of reasoning, because organs are also resources and no longer of use to the dead, they too should be coercively transferred to fulfill the welfare rights of those with organ failure (Fabre 2006).

Conscription may be politically infeasible or be subject to practical objections. But what of principled ethical objections? One could point to the distress that families would suffer (Brazier 2002), but what of the distress of the families of people who die for want of an organ? One could point to the interests of the deceased, but the arguments above need not deny that the deceased have interests; they claim that those interests are outweighed. One could claim that the deceased have rights that protect their interests and deny that potential recipients have rights to organs. Even if the deceased have rights and potential recipients do not, it would have to be shown that the rights of the deceased are not outweighed by the needs of those with organ failure.

As noted above, many factors affect the supply of organs and transplantation systems have made clinical, logistical, and marketing attempts to increase supply. Some of these raise ethical questions. Consider preparing for organ retrieval patients who are not yet dead, for example by ventilating patients thought likely to die in the near future. If the preparatory measures are permitted, more donors would become available than if they are not. But these measures would not be done for the therapeutic benefit of the patient. They would be contrary to a duty to act only in the best interests of the patient, at least when “best interests” are understood as only medical interests. On the other hand, if “best interests” were understood more broadly, as explained in 2.1 below, then in some cases, such as where the patient had agreed to donate, the preparatory measures might be in the patient’s non-medical interests. In any case, the measures need not be against the patient’s medical interests.

As for social marketing (or “nudging”) to try to increase consent rates, these might target potential donors, as with campaigns to increase the number on a donor registry, or the families of those who have died, say by using specially trained people to ask their consent. In some cases, these ideas invite the question of whether they involve manipulation and whether any consent obtained is valid (Sharif and Moorlock 2018; T.M. Wilkinson 2011). They also raise again the question of how much it would matter if consent were not valid if the supply of organs increased.

2. Organ Retrieval from Living Donors

The successful early transplants used organs taken from living donors. For a long time the hope was that, when technical problems were overcome, enough organs would be supplied by dead donors (Price 2009). That way, healthy living people need not undergo the risk and discomfort of non-therapeutic organ retrieval. That hope however was false and the persistent shortage of donors has led to the increasing use of living donors. It has been reported that 37,360 live donor kidney transplants occurred in 2019 ( Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation ), over 37% of the global total. For livers, the global total from living donors was 7,610, over 21% of the total. Rules governing living donation have generally become more permissive, allowing donations from close genetic relatives, then spouses, then partners and friends, and, in some jurisdictions, even strangers.

The primary ethical question raised by living donation is to do with the risk of having an organ taken. Having an organ taken imposes risks of death, disease, and discomfort from trauma, infection, the use of a general anaesthetic, and the loss of all or part of an organ (although the liver will usually regenerate, replacing the part removed). These risks are not negligible. However, the risk of death is not enormous. Focusing on the kidney, the most frequently donated organ and the safest to take from live donors, it has been estimated that the risk of death from kidney retrieval is 1/3000. There appears to be no difference between healthy screened living kidney donors and the general population in long-term survival and the risk of kidney failure. (Ibrahim et al. 2009). That said, the general population is less healthy on average than the healthy screened living donors, who do in fact undergo some extra risk of long-term renal failure as a result of one kidney being removed (Grams et al. 2016).

Under what conditions, if any, is it permissible to impose such a risk on someone who will receive no therapeutic benefit? For competent people, it is overwhelmingly accepted that their valid consent is a necessary condition of morally permissible retrieval. (A very few writers disagree, e.g., Rakowski 1991 and, less clearly, Fabre 2006). But even if consent is necessary, it may not be sufficient, and a further question is how much risk it is permissible to impose even on those who consent. Living donor transplantation also raises important questions about the validity of consent and about whether organs may ever be taken from healthy non-competent people, such as children.

Medical ethics traditionally instructs clinicians not to harm people. Taking organs from healthy people does seem to harm them, so living donor transplantation appears contrary to traditional medical ethics. One reply is to say that the “do no harm” rule is a relic of the medical profession’s paternalism; if people want to donate their organs and know what they are doing, why stop them (Veatch and Ross 2015)? This reply raises the difficult problem, discussed below, of how far consent justifies harm. Another reply is to say that taking organs from willing living donors may not be all-things-considered harmful to them (Spital 2004). This reply usually draws on one of the following normative views: (a) that living donation is only permissible when we expect the donor not to be harmed; or (b) that it is only permissible when we expect the donor to benefit (in both cases, all things considered, taking account of a wider range of factors than just physical wellbeing) (Williams 2018).

Suppose a person were prevented from donating an organ. On the one hand, the person would avoid the risks of physical harm. But, on the other, the person may suffer what are, in the medical literature, called “psychosocial harms”. These could include loneliness from losing a relative, having to act as caregiver to a person with organ failure, and survivor guilt. In philosophical terms, a person may also suffer vicarious harm. People whose welfare is intertwined with others suffer a loss when the other person does (Feinberg 1984; Raz 1986). Quite possibly, then, a person who donates may not suffer harm all-things-considered, that is, when all the different instances of harm are weighed up.

The “do no harm” argument against living donation is not widely accepted—that is why living donation proceeds apace. Nonetheless, even if the physical harm can be outweighed by the need to avoid other harms, or by consent, or both, one may think that as a matter of policy living donation should be discouraged. One fear is that increasing the use of living donors relieves the pressure to find ways to get more organs from other sources, notably the deceased.

Assuming consent is ethically necessary before taking organs from living competent people, questions arise about what makes consent valid. The usual answer in medical ethics is that consent must be free (voluntary), sufficiently informed, and made by someone with the capacity (competence) to consent. Thus, in the context of living donation, people must know what living donation involves, including the risks to them and the chances of success for the recipient, they must be able to decide freely whether to donate, and they must be competent to do so. (See the entry on informed consent .)

Can people freely give consent when considering whether to donate to a close relative? It may be thought that consent in such a case is suspect because potential donors would be: (1) desperate to save their relatives (2) subject to a feeling of moral obligation or (3) subject to family pressure. The first two reasons are not good ones. People give valid consent in other desperate circumstances, for instance to a lifesaving operation, and acting out of a reasonable sense of moral obligation is a way of exercising one’s freedom rather than a constraint upon it (we consider below unusual senses of obligation in the context of religious stranger donation) (Radcliffe-Richards 2006; T.M. Wilkinson and Moore 1997).

Family pressure is different. Family pressure may take the form of credible threats of violence, in which case the potential donor is coerced and any consent invalid. Family pressure may be felt as a form of moral obligation on the part of the donor, in which case (see above) consent would not be made invalid for that reason. Somewhat harder to think through is family pressure that consists of the implicit threat of ostracism. On the one hand, that pressure may be very effective. On the other, it works by family members withdrawing their goodwill, something people are generally entitled to do. Some views of coercion and valid consent imply that consent to avoid ostracism would be valid (e.g., Nozick 1974); others do not (e.g., Cohen 1988). As it happens, transplanters will often furnish reluctant donors with “white lies” to enable them to avoid donating while retaining the appearance of honour. For instance, reluctant donors may be told to say they are clinically unsuitable on anatomical grounds. Whether “white lies” are mandatory or even permissible depends partly on resolving the question of when family pressure undercuts valid consent (den Hartogh 2008b).

Many living donor programs use extensive psychosocial screening as well as a lengthy consent process (Price 2000). Potential donors are screened for physical health, which is largely uncontroversial, but they are also screened for their motivations. The typical advice is to screen for excessive sense of duty, undue influence, unconscious internal neurotic influences, and abnormal emotional involvement. Screening of this nature is more controversial since it involves making difficult judgments about what counts as excessive in a sense of duty, undue in influence, and abnormal in emotional involvement, and it requires spotting neurotic influences. At least in the past, some critics have thought that transplant professionals have overused their power to refuse people as donors (MacFarquhar 2009).

To take one example, consider whether a member of a religious sect, such as the Jesus Christians, should be allowed to donate to a stranger. It may be thought that such a person could not be giving valid consent, perhaps because of what a sect has done (the “brainwashing” worry) or because of some psychological vulnerability. However, it is often difficult to decide whether a way of influencing someone is illegitimate or whether motivations and beliefs are signs of mental illness (see entry on mental disorder ).

Assuming a potential donor would give valid consent, how far would that justify retrieval of organs? The “do no harm” rule implies that people should not be harmed even with their consent although, as was said earlier, some living organ donation may not harm the donor all-things-considered. Suppose a man wanted to donate his second kidney to his second son, having already donated a kidney to another son, thus paying the price of a life on dialysis. Suppose a parent wanted to donate her heart to her child, thus causing her own death. Would transplant teams act wrongly if they took organs in such cases? And—what is a separate question—should they be allowed to?

It cannot be assumed that, in these desperate cases, the parents would be all-things-considered harmed by retrieval. Whether they are would depend on how the correct specification of harm handles vicarious harms and psychosocial harms. Perhaps a parent could be better off dead than to have to live without her child (which is not to say that her reason to donate is self-interest).

Suppose, though, that genuinely consensual organ retrieval would all-things-considered harm the donor. One way to try to decide when retrieval should nonetheless be permitted is to compare the values of autonomy with well-being. The question would then become an aspect of familiar debates about paternalism and the limits of consent. Living donation does have the unusual twist that, if one were to prevent donation, one would prevent an act of considerable value to a badly off person, the potential recipient. Moreover, to prevent living donation would be dissimilar to many acts of state paternalism, such as mandatory wearing of seat belts or the prohibition of certain drugs, in that donating an organ would not generally be the result of inattention, weak-will, addiction, or excessive short-sightedness. Because of its value to the recipient and because donors’ choices are not obviously flawed, living donation of the sorts that actually take place should be allowed and seems ethically permissible.

What about organ donation that goes beyond what is currently permitted, such as the donation of the second kidney or donation of an organ necessary for life? Liberal democracies do not generally allow consent to be a defense to bodily harm at or well below the level of death (Price 2000), but should they? The answer turns in part on how far third parties—transplant teams in this case—may inflict harms on those who genuinely give autonomous consent or, to put it another way, the extent to which autonomous people can waive their rights of bodily integrity. But policy considerations are also relevant. Can one be sure that consent is genuine? Would some people be forced into consenting in a way that a screening process would fail to detect? If so, how much weight should be attached to cases where organs are taken without genuine consent? These questions arise for living donation in general, but the errors are worse in cases where severe harm or death is the certain consequence of donation. (The questions also arise in the debates about whether voluntary slavery or euthanasia should be permitted (Feinberg 1986)).

Although rules and practices governing living donation have generally become more permissive in most respects, they have become stricter in the case of incompetent donors (Price 2000). Only six living kidney donations by minors were performed between 2000 and 2015 in the U.S., for example. Additionally, in the U.S., just 20 minors have donated a liver lobe or segment since 1987. In Europe, only three cases of living kidney donation by minors have been reported, all involving adolescents and occurring in the U.K. prior to 2006 (Van Assche et al . 2016).

As the discussion above of psychosocial screening implies, competence is not always easily determined, but let us assume in this section that we are considering clearly incompetent donors, namely relatively young children and people with severe mental disabilities or illnesses.

If valid consent were a necessary condition of ethically permissible organ retrieval from the living, then retrieval from incompetent donors would be wrong. However, it is not clear why consent should be a necessary condition in all cases rather than only in those cases where people are capable of giving it.

Several arguments have been given for permitting retrieval from incompetent people. Utilitarian arguments appear to permit retrieval because the donor loses less than the recipient gains. On the face of it, however, that argument would support organ conscription from living competent people too. Some people have argued in specific cases that the person would have wanted to donate, thus using the idea of substituted judgment familiar in other cases of deciding for incompetent patients. However, substituted judgment is misapplied in cases where the person is not, and never has been, competent (Buchanan and Brock 1990). More plausibly, it may be thought that, at least in some cases, incompetent donors are not harmed by donating an organ. If a child’s donation would save the life of a sibling with organ failure, the donor may gain in the psychosocial and vicarious senses described above in the discussion of the “do no harm” rule. Donors may be no worse off for donating, in which case organ retrieval would not infringe the “do no harm” rule (T.M. Wilkinson 2011).

Even if organ retrieval from an incompetent donor were ethically permissible in a given case, it may be that policy considerations, such as the risk of abuse, would justify an outright ban. Some writers, though, believe that legal safeguards would be enough to protect incompetent donors from abuse (Munson 2002).

3. The Allocation of Organs

The scarcity of organs creates an allocation problem. A great deal has been written in philosophy on the principles of the allocation of scarce resources, although not much on the allocation of organs specifically (see the entries on distributive justice ; equality ; justice and access to health care ). Unsurprisingly, many of the principles cited in official transplantation allocation documents are familiar (see Other Internet Resources : TSANZ 2014; NHSBT 2013). These principles include allocating to those who would benefit the most (a proxy for utility), to those who are the sickest (a proxy for helping the worst off), to those whose medical condition will deteriorate the soonest (urgency), and to those who have been waiting the longest (often linked to equity). Official documents also stress principles of non-discrimination, which are taken to exclude allocating according to judgments of social worth, as well as race, sex, religion etc. In practice, the principles conflict; the person waiting the longest may not be the one who would gain the most from a transplant, for example. So official allocation protocols also have to say how the conflict between principles should be resolved. (For a philosophical discussion of the principles and their application to organ allocation see Kamm 1993.)

This entry does not provide a full account of allocation principles for organs. Rather, it aims to do three specific things. First, it explains some of the features of allocation of organs that need to be taken into account when applying basic principles. This section draws to the attention of philosophers the real-world complexity of applying abstract principles of allocation. Second, it discusses the problems of responsibility for condition and social value. These problems are both ethically interesting and, while not unique to organ allocation, are more poignant than for other scarce resources because they often cannot be avoided just by making more money available. Third, it describes some transplantation-specific cases of the interaction between allocation rules and the number of organs retrieved for transplantation. These cases raise doubts about the coherence of some actually existing allocation practices.

The allocation of organs is certainly not just a medical problem to be solved with medical expertise (Veatch and Ross 2015). The principles that apply to allocation are quintessentially ethical principles. However, applying those principles correctly to produce final answers as to who receives organs does require medical knowledge and much other knowledge besides. To see the point, imagine that we have to design an organ allocation scheme.

Suppose we start with first-best principles, such as allocation according to need, or urgency, or benefit, or equity, or some mix of these principles based on some judgment of their relative weight. Clearly, applying these principles requires considering what organs do. Organs differ in many ways that matter to allocation, such as

alternative treatments to transplantation, the ability to stratify risk, the different factors that affect patient and/or graft survival, and differences in the interactions between donor graft and recipients on outcomes. (NHSBT 2013, p. 8)

To explain just one of these factors, nearly all patients in rich countries whose kidneys have failed have the alternative of dialysis, whereas most of those with acute liver failure have no alternative to transplantation but death. Liver allocation, to a much greater extent than kidney allocation, must thus make some judgment about the importance of saving lives immediately compared with, for instance, improving quality or extending lifespan.

Next, the application of the principles ought to range across all the stages of transplantation. Details vary from place to place and organ to organ but in general the pathway to transplantation can be thought of as having these steps: being referred for assessment; being assessed and then listed; and receiving an organ once listed. People may be halted at each step, perhaps for medical reasons, perhaps because they cannot pay (the so-called “green screen”) or because the public system will not pay. Principles need to range over all steps. For instance, scrupulous fairness to those on a waiting list may obscure injustice in access to the list.

Implementing first-best principles can have important secondary consequences. To take one example, the scheme the U.S. introduced in 1989 to allocate kidneys increased the weighting for immune system compatibility and the effect was to reduce the proportion of African-Americans transplanted (Elster 1992: ch. 5). Many thought the result inequitable because of the disparate impact even though the difference was not due to overt discrimination (see the entry on justice, inequality, and health ).

In addition, a scheme must take account of procedural values such as transparency, non-arbitrariness, and public deliberation (Miller 1999, ch.5). For instance, we may think that time spent waiting on a list is only a rough proxy for fairness. Perhaps someone entered a list late because of the difficulties in finding the time and resources to complete the requirements for listing; in perfect fairness that person should not be disadvantaged as a result. And yet time waiting is a visible and checkable criterion, whereas taking account of diverse social and economic circumstances would be procedurally fraught when it comes to ordering a priority list.

Finally, allocation must take account of incentives in two distinct ways. It must consider how the scheme would be operated. The ideal application of first-best principles would require considerable flexibility and discretion. Fixed rules or algorithms inevitably fail to capture all the relevant information. And yet flexibility and discretion are open to gaming by doctors and patients, for instance in exaggerating the urgency of transplanting a patient. Thus incentive effects may make an ideal method sub-ideal in practice.

Allocation must also consider the incentive effects of an allocation scheme on the size of the donor pool.

This topic is discussed below.

Two other specific allocation questions are:

• Should people who have caused themselves to be in need of a transplant by leading a “high risk” life be assigned lower priority?
• Should people who are more “socially valuable” be assigned higher priority?

Some people increase their chances of needing a transplant organ by leading what they know to be unhealthy lifestyles. Many of those who smoke, or drink alcohol excessively, or eat too much know that they are acting unhealthily (whether or not they know that smoking increases the risks of heart and lung failure, that drinking increases the risk of liver failure, and that obesity increases the risk of kidney and pancreas failure). It has been suggested that such people forfeit or weaken their claims to medical treatment (Brown 2013; Buyx 2008; Smart 1994; Walker 2010).

There is one “non-ethical” argument for this view, called the Medical Argument. According to this:

… patients with self-inflicted illness … should have lower priority in access to health care because they are more likely to experience poor medical outcomes. (Sharkley and Gillam 2010: 661)

On the factual premise, it seems false that as a class those with “self-inflicted” illness would do so badly they should be deprioritized (Munson 2002), although transplant systems often do try to screen out those who would continue to act in ways that jeopardize their new organs. In any case, the Medical Argument is essentially just an application of more general cost-effectiveness criteria and not something that requires a special ethical justification. The arguments considered below, in contrast, are ones which claim that (for example) heavy drinkers and smokers should have lower priority access to organs even if they are no more likely than others to experience poor transplant outcomes. There are three main ethical arguments for this claim, two of which are clearly quite weak; a third, the Restoration Argument, is worth taking more seriously.

The first argument concerns incentives . It says that if (for example) we refuse to provide heavy drinkers with liver transplants then this will discourage irresponsible drinking. Similar things are said about overeating and obesity.

The argument however is problematic. To continue with alcohol, would organ allocation policy really make much difference to people’s drinking-behavior? Some reasons for thinking not include:

• The very long-term nature of the calculation that drinkers would be required to make. They would need to gamble on organ allocation policies staying as they are for perhaps many decades and would need to trade off highly speculative longer-term gains (maybe needing and then getting an organ many years down the line) against short-term pleasure and reward (having another drink now).
• Serious liver disease ought to be incentive enough. If the prospect of serious organ failure is not acting as an incentive then what are the chances of allocation policy doing so?
• Many heavy drinkers are dependent on alcohol and so incentives may not engage them effectively. Similar things might be said about smoking, illegal drug use, and even diet (Walker 2010).

Another challenge for the incentives approach is that if the rationale for deprioritising heavy drinkers, say, is simply incentivisation then there is no reason to restrict these measures to cases of organ failure. Why not instead remove their driving licenses, or their access to non-urgent healthcare, or subject them to punitive rates of tax? Such measures could all be incentives to stop drinking and would surely be more effective—not least because their effects would be felt straightaway, rather than many years down the line.

The next argument suggests that heavy drinkers and smokers should be deprioritised on transplant waiting lists as a punishment for wrongdoing. There are several reasons to reject such a position:

• Unhealthy behavior such as excessive drinking, overeating, and smoking may well not be morally wrong nor merit punishment.
• If punishing wrongdoing is the purpose of the allocation exercise then there are probably more deserving candidates for punishment than those who overindulge ( even if there is something morally wrong with such overindulgence).
• Using healthcare resource allocation as a mode of punishment is impracticable and unfair, and may have adverse consequences (such as negative effects on public attitudes to organ donation and to doctors). Selecting only certain risky behavior as immoral seems arbitrary. Waiving that problem, how are judgments about causal and moral responsibility to be made in a timely and cost-effective way, and how are doctors going to make them? Punishment should only be meted out by state bodies (i) for prohibited acts (so not, in most countries, drinking, overeating, and smoking) and (ii) following “due process” in a court (Harris 1985).

A version of objection (c) applies to an opposite policy proposal: that higher priority should be given to patients with high social value. This “social value” could either be instrumental (doctors, nurses, parents of young children perhaps) or moral (prioritising the virtuous). The fundamental objection to rewarding social value is that it infringes a principle of equal treatment but, putting that aside, it has the practical and fairness problems of the punishment proposal. How is social value to be determined and then how is it to be applied in a timely and cost-effective manner? And, given the potentially dire consequences of being assigned low social value (which could in practice be a “death sentence”), procedurally it seems reasonable to expect something akin to a court hearing. A version of allocating according to perceived social value (among other criteria) was tried in Seattle in the 1960s in allocating very scarce dialysis (Alexander 1962). The result seems to have removed any enthusiasm among transplant systems for trying it again.

Perhaps one exception to this is giving higher priority to frontline healthcare workers in situations where such workers are themselves a scarce resource, and where therefore there would be fewer transplants overall if sick healthcare workers were not prioritised. The justification here is that whereas many other “social value” based allocation decisions are zero-sum games, prioritising healthcare workers could instead increase the total number of available transplants. This argument has some merit but is not fundamentally so much about social value per se as about the pragmatics of maximising lives saved. Thus, social value notwithstanding, if the healthcare labor market was oversupplied and doctors and nurses could easily be replaced then this pragmatic argument would not apply. Conversely, this pragmatic argument could apply to any shortage profession: e.g. in a situation where, because of a shortage of Human Resources consultants in the health sector, fewer operations are taking place than would otherwise be the case.

The most promising argument in favor of deprioritising those with “unhealthy” lifestyles is the Restoration Argument, which goes as follows (Harris 1985; Smart 1994; S. Wilkinson 1999).

• Some people ( risk-takers ) knowingly and voluntarily have unhealthy and/or dangerous lifestyles.
• Risk-takers are more likely to need transplant organs than the general population ( non-risk-takers ).
• Transplant organs are in short supply.
• Because of (2) and (3), if we allocate on the basis of clinical need or clinical outcomes alone, non-risk-takers will be harmed by the risk-takers ’ lifestyle choices; the non-risk-takers’ chances of getting a transplant organ will be lower because of the risk-takers ’ increased demands on the system.
• To allow the non-risk-takers to be harmed by the risk-takers would be unfair. Why should non-risk-takers have to pay the price for risk-takers ’ lifestyle choices?
• In order to avoid this unfairness, risk-takers ’ entitlements should be reduced such that there is no harm to the non-risk-takers .

One of the most attractive features of this argument is that it grounds the deprioritisation of those with unhealthy lifestyles not in value judgments about their lifestyles, but rather in a more neutral set of concerns about preventing harm to innocent third parties. Thus this argument could apply regardless of whether the risk-taking behavior in question is virtuous or vicious.

Even this argument faces difficulties though. One is that risk-taking may not generate additional healthcare costs or demand for organs. Indeed, some kinds of risk-taking behavior (motor sports perhaps) could even increase the supply of high-quality cadaveric organs available for transplant.

S. Wilkinson (1999) takes this fact as a point of departure for a deeper critique of the Restoration Argument. He claims that, if it turned out (as is possible in many European countries) that smokers cost the state less than non-smokers overall (because on average they die younger, and hence consume fewer health and social care resources in retirement) then proponents of the Restoration Argument would be committed to the unpalatable conclusion that smokers should be given not lower but higher priority than other patients. Otherwise smokers would be harmed by the non-smokers’ deliberate attempts to extend their own lives by avoiding smoking. His argument is about financial resources but similar considerations would apply to organs in relevantly similar situations of scarcity.

Wilkinson concludes that this objection seriously weakens the Restoration Argument. Either it is simply a reductio ad absurdum of the Restoration Argument, in which case the argument must be rejected wholesale. Or at least its defenders will need to appeal to something else, such as moral or social value, in order to avoid the argument’s unacceptable consequences—thus making it vulnerable to some of the problems with appealing to social value noted above (Walker 2010; S. Wilkinson 1999).

Another wider issue with all of the arguments in this section is that assigning responsibility for patterns of action and saying what responsibility amounts to in such cases will be complex, often involving the interaction of multiple agents and multiple environmental, genetic, and social factors (Brown & Savulescu 2019). Therefore, at least in practice, ascertaining for which health states an individual is sufficiently responsible will be too difficult and multi-faceted for use in allocation decisions.

In the economy, the amount produced depends in part on how production will be allocated, at least insofar as people respond to incentives (see the entry on distributive justice ). For instance, a guaranteed equal share gives no self-interested incentive to work hard or in an efficient job. In organ transplantation, the number of organs available also depends on how they would be allocated. In the economy, ideal allocation principles may have to yield to the reality of incentives, which is why it is often thought that strict equality is precluded by concern for efficiency. Similarly, transplantation seems to face a choice; it can keep its ideal principles and have fewer organs or compromise them and have more. Some examples discussed here are live donation, kidney exchanges, directed deceased donation, priority to donors, and priority to children. These examples are diverse so one cannot straightforwardly tell whether practice in one is consistent with practice in another. Nonetheless, they have in common the question: what if the usual principles of allocation led to fewer organs being donated than would deviating from those principles? That they have this question in common has not been widely appreciated, which may explain why the question has been answered in different ways in the examples described below.

Live donation . Most live organ donations have a designated recipient, usually a relative or friend (Baily et al. 2020). Usually the designated recipient is not the person who would have got the organ if it were allocated via the method for deceased donor organs. Transplantation systems could refuse such offers for the sake of their normal allocation principles—but they do not. One obvious sufficient reason is that, if the organs were not allocated to the person the donor designates, the donor would not donate and an organ would be forgone.

The suspension of normal allocation principles when live donation is involved often passes by without notice, although one recent exception is a debate over people on transplant waiting lists who use social media campaigns to find willing donors (Moorlock 2015; Moorlock and Draper 2018). Such cases are a good illustration of the shape of the underlying issue. If these donors were merely being redirected – that is, if they were intending to donate anyway, even without a social media campaign – then arguably suspending the normal principles would be tantamount to unfair queue jumping via what has been termed a “beauty contest”. But if these social media campaigns bring new donors and extra organs into the system, and provided that other ethical conditions are met (notably the valid consent of the donor), then it would seem churlish to reject such offers, given their capacity to extend and/or improve recipients’ lives.

Kidney exchange . Sometimes potential live kidney donors cannot donate to the recipients they wish because their kidneys are incompatible with the recipient’s body. Many systems now arrange complicated swaps whereby pairs or more than pairs of live donors give to each other’s recipients (Fortin 2013). Sometimes people donate into the general pool in exchange for their preferred recipient getting the next available deceased donor kidney. Unless the preferred recipients would happen to get the deceased donor organ anyway under normal allocation rules, they jump the queue. As with more common methods of live donation, the normal allocation principles are suspended so as not to forgo extra organs.

Directed deceased donation. Much more controversial is directed deceased donation. The direction can take the form of naming a recipient, as when a dying person stipulates that she wants her organ to go to her daughter. Or it can take the form of specifying a group either to receive or be denied the organ. The most controversial direction has been ethnic, when donors or their families have tried to prevent organs going to members of certain ethnic groups (T.M. Wilkinson 2007b). On the face of it, refusing directed donations forgoes organs for the sake of a principle of allocation, which is the opposite of practice with live donation. Matters are more complicated because the overall incentive effects of accepting directed donations are unclear. However, jurisdictions such as the U.K. have banned accepting directed donation for reasons besides the overall effect on the organ supply (U.K. Department of Health 2000 in Other Internet Resources ). They have cited principles such as allocation according to need as giving sufficient reason, independent of effect on numbers. A consistency argument can be put to them: why do they accept deviations from allocation according to need in the case of live donation but reject them for deceased donation?

Priority to donors . A minority of jurisdictions give some priority in receiving organs to those who have declared their willingness to donate (Cronin 2014). One reason is the supposed incentive effect of giving priority to donors of encouraging more donations. Priority schemes have been criticized on practical grounds but some criticism invokes principles, such as allocation according to need (Quigley et al. 2012). As before, the principles are supposed by those who cite them to be sufficient to defeat priority schemes even if they would produce more organs. By contrast, the principles are not thought to outweigh getting more organs with live donation and kidney exchange.

Priority to children . Nearly all jurisdictions give priority to children when allocating kidneys from deceased donors. One upshot seems to be a reduction in the overall supply of organs, at least in the United States (Axelrod et al. 2010). People who would have been live donors to children do not donate when the children get rapid access to deceased donor kidneys. Perhaps potential living donors would rather have the child get a deceased donor organ than run the risk for themselves; perhaps they would like to hold their kidneys in reserve in case the children need retransplantation or other children need them. One might think that if priority to children reduces the number of living donors to them it should increase the number of living donors to adults. Nonetheless, the overall effect is negative. As before, those who endorse the principle of priority to children have some choosing to do; how many organs are they willing to forgo for the sake of the principle, and is the answer consistent with their willingness to accept designated live organ donations (T.M. Wilkinson and Dittmer 2016)? A more unpalatable choice would arise if discriminating against children produced more organs via live donation.

• Alexander, S., 1962, “They Decide Who Lives, Who Dies”, Life , 53: 102–25.
• Axelrod, D.A., K.P. McCullough, E.D. Brewer, B.N. Becker, D.L.Segev, and P.S. Rao, 2010, “Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation in the United States, 1999–2008: The Changing Face of Living Donation”, American Journal of Transplantation 10 (Part 2) (4): 987–1002. doi:10.1111/j.1600-6143.2010.03022.x
• Bailey, P., Wong, K., Robb, M., Burnapp, L., Rogers, A., Courtney, A., Wroe, C., 2020, “Has the UK living kidney donor population changed over time? A cross-sectional descriptive analysis of the UK living donor registry between 2006 and 2017”, BMJ Open , 10:e033906. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2019-033906
• Bayefsky, M., and B. Berkman, 2016, “The Ethics of Allocating Uterine Transplants”, Bioethics , 25(3): 350–365. doi:10.1017/S0963180115000687
• Boddington, P., 1998, “Organ Donation After Death—Should I Decide, or Should My Family?”, Journal of Applied Philosophy , 15(1): 69–81. doi:10.1111/1468-5930.00074
• Brazier, M., 2002, “Retained Organs: Ethics and humanity”, Legal Studies , 22(4): 550–69. doi:10.1111/j.1748-121X.2002.tb00668.x
• Brown, R.C.H., 2013, “Moral responsibility for (un)healthy behaviour”, Journal of Medical Ethics , 39: 695–698. doi:10.1136/medethics-2012-100774
• Brown, R. and J. Savulescu, 2019, “Responsibility in healthcare across time and agents”, Journal of Medical Ethics , 45: 636–644. doi:10.1136/medethics-2019-105382
• Buchanan, A. and D. Brock, 1990, Deciding for Others , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Buyx, A.M., 2008, “Personal Responsibility for Health as a Rationing Criterion: why we don’t like it and why maybe we should”, Journal of Medical Ethics , 34: 871–874. doi:10.1136/jme.2007.024059
• Caplan, A.L., J.J. McCartney, and D.P. Reid, 2015, Replacement Parts: The Ethics of Procuring and Replacing Organs in Humans , Washington: Georgetown University Press.
• Cohen, G.A., 1988, History, Labour, and Freedom , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Cronin, A.J., 2014, “Points mean prizes: priority points, preferential status and directed organ donation in Israel”, Israel Journal of Health Policy Research , 3:8, first online 24 February 2014. doi:10.1186/2045-4015-3-8
• Elster, J., 1992, Local Justice: How Institutions Allocate Scarce Goods and Necessary Burdens , New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
• Fabre, C., 2006, Whose Body Is It Anyway: Justice and the integrity of the person? , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• –––, 2008, “Posthumous Rights”, in C. Grant, B. Holburn, A. Hatzistavrou, and M. Kramer (eds.), The Legacy of H.L.A. Hart: Legal, political, and moral philosophy , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 225–38.
• Fan, R., and M. Wang, 2019, “Family-based consent and motivation for cadaveric organ donation in China: an ethical exploration”, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy , 44: 534–553. doi:10.1093/jmp/jhz022.
• Farrell, A.M. and D. Price, 2011, Organ Shortage: Ethics, Law and Pragmatism , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Feinberg, J., 1984, Harm to Others , New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 1986, Harm to Self , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Fortin, M.C., 2013, “Is it ethical to invite compatible pairs to participate in exchange programmes?”, Journal of Medical Ethics , 39(12): 732–747. doi:10.1136/medethics-2012-101129
• Freeman, M. and P.A. Jaoudé, 2007, “Justifying surgery’s last taboo: the ethics of face transplants”, Journal of Medical Ethics , 33: 76–81. doi:10.1136/jme.2006.016865
• Gill, M. 2004, “Presumed Consent, Autonomy, and Organ Donation”, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy , 29(1): 37–59. doi:10.1076/jmep.29.1.37.30412
• Grams, M.E. et al., 2016, “Kidney-Failure Risk Projection for the Living Donor Candidate”, The New England Journal of Medicine , 374(5): 411–421. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa1510491
• Harris, J., 1985, The Value of Life , London: Routledge.
• –––, 2002, “Law and Regulation of Retained Organs: The ethical issues”, Legal Studies , 22(4): 527–49. doi:10.1111/j.1748-121X.2002.tb00667.x
• –––, 2003, “Organ Procurement: Dead interests, living needs”, Journal of Medical Ethics , 29: 130–4. doi:10.1136/jme.29.3.130
• den Hartogh, G., 2008a, Farewell to Non-commitment: Decision systems for organ donation from an ethical viewpoint , The Hague: Centre for Ethics and Health.
• –––, 2008b, “When Are Living Donations Voluntary Enough?” in W. Weimar et al. (eds.) Organ Transplantation: Ethical, legal and psychosocial aspects , Lengerich: Pabst Science Publishers, 221–31.
• –––, 2019, “Respect for Autonomy in Systems of Postmortem Organ Procurement”, Bioethics , 33: 550–56. doi:10.1111/bioe.12553
• Ibrahim, H., R. Foley, L. Tan, T. Rogers, R. Bailey, H. Guo, C. Gross, and A. Matas, 2009, “Long-Term Consequences of Kidney Donation”, The New England Journal of Medicine , 360: 459–69. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa0804883
• Kamm, F.M., 1993, Morality, Mortality , vol. 1, New York: Oxford University Press.
• Kluge, E-H.W., 2000, “Improving Organ Retrieval Rates: Various proposals and their ethical validity”, Health Care Analysis , 8(3): 279–95. doi:10.1023/A:1009496002775
• Liberman, A., 2015, “A Promise Acceptance Model of Organ Donation”, Social Theory and Practice , 41: 131–48. doi: 10.5840/soctheorpract20154116
• Lotz, M., 2018, “Uterus Transplantation as Radical Reproduction: taking the adoption alternative more seriously”, Bioethics , 32: 499–508. doi: 10.1111/bioe.12490
• MacFarquhar, Larissa, 2009, “The Kindest Cut”, The New Yorker , July 27, 2009.
• Machnicki G., L. Seriai, and M.A. Schnitzler, 2006, “Economics of transplantation: A review of the literature”, Transplantation Reviews , 20: 61–75. doi:10.1016/j.trre.2006.05.001
• Miller, D, 1999, Principles of Social Justice , Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
• Miller, F.G. and R.D. Truog, 2012, Death, Dying, and Organ Transplantation: Reconstructing Medical Ethics at the End of Life , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Moorlock, G., 2015, “Directed altruistic living donation: what is wrong with the beauty contest?”, Journal of Medical Ethics , 41: 875–79. doi: 10.1136/medethics-2014-102230
• Moorlock, G., and H. Draper, 2018, “Empathy, Social Media, and Directed Altruistic Living Organ Donation”, Bioethics , 32: 289–97. doi:10.1111/bioe.12438
• Munson, R., 2002, Raising the Dead , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Nozick, R., 1974, Anarchy, State, and Utopia , Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
• O’Donovan, L., N.J. Williams, and S. Wilkinson, 2019, “Ethical and policy issues raised by uterus transplants”, British Medical Bulletin , 131: 19–28. doi:10.1093/bmb/ldz022
• Price, D., 2000, Legal and Ethical Aspects of Organ Transplantation , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2009, Human Tissue in Transplantation and Research: A model legal and ethical donation framework , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Quigley, M., L. Wright, and V. Ravitsky, 2012, “Organ Donation and Priority Points in Israel: An Ethical Analysis”, Transplantation , 93(10): 970–973. doi:10.1097/TP.0b013e31824e3d95
• Radcliffe Richards, J., 2006, “Consent with inducements: the case of body parts and services”, in F. Miller and A. Wertheimer (eds.) The Ethics of Consent: Theory and Practice , Oxford: Oxford University Press: 281–304. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195335149.003.0011
• –––, 2012, The Ethics of Transplants: why careless thought costs lives , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Rakowski, E., 1991, Equal Justice , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Raz, J., 1986, The Morality of Freedom , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Robertson, J., 2016, “Other Women’s Wombs: uterus transplanation and gestational surrogacy”, Journal of Law and the Biosciences , 3: 68–86. doi:10.1093/jlb/lsw011
• Sandman, L., 2018, “The Importance of Being Pregnant: on the healthcare need for uterus transplanation”, Bioethics , 32: 519–526. doi:10.1111/bioe.12525
• Sharif, A. and G. Moorlock, 2018, “Influencing Relatives to Respect Donor Autonomy: should we nudge families to consent to organ donation?”, Bioethics , 32: 155–163. doi:10.1111/bioe.12420
• Sharkey, K. and L. Gillam, 2010, “Should patients with self-inflicted illness receive lower priority in access to healthcare resources? Mapping out the debate”, Journal of Medical Ethics , 20: 661–665. doi:10.1136/jme.2009.032102
• Smart, B., 1994, “Fault and the Allocation of Spare Organs”, Journal of Medical Ethics , 20: 26–30. doi:10.1136/jme.20.1.26
• Spital, A., 2004, “Donor Benefit is Key to Justified Organ Donation”, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , 13(1): 105–109. doi:10.1017/S0963180104131174
• Steiner, H., 1994, An Essay on Rights , Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
• Thaler, R. and C.R. Sunstein, 2008, Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness , New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Tilney, N., 2003, Transplant: From myth to reality , New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Van Assche, K., Thys, K., Vansweevelt, T., Genicot, G., Borry, P., Sterckx, S., 2016, “Living tissue and organ donation by minors: Suggestions to improve the regulatory framework in Europe”, Medical Law International , 16(1–2): 58–93. doi:10.1177/0968533216660877
• Veatch, R. and L. Ross, 2015, Transplantation Ethics (2 nd edition), Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.
• Voo, T.C. and S. Holm, 2014, “Organs as inheritable property?”, Journal of Medical Ethics , 40:57–61. doi:10.1136/medethics-2013-101336
• Walker, T., 2010, “Who do we treat first when resources are scarce?”, Journal of Applied Philosophy , 27: 200–211. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5930.2010.00486.x
• Wilkinson, S., 1999, “Smokers’ rights to health care: why the ‘restoration argument’ is a moralising wolf in a liberal sheep’s clothing”, Journal of Applied Philosophy , 16: 255–269.
• –––, 2003, Bodies for Sale: ethics and exploitation in the human body trade , London: Routledge.
• Wilkinson, S. and N.J. Williams, 2016, “Should uterus transplants be publicly funded?”, Journal of Medical Ethics , 42: 559–565. doi:10.1136/medethics-2015-102999
• Wilkinson, T.M., 2007a, “Individual and Family Decisions About Organ Donation”, Journal of Applied Philosophy , 24: 26–40.
• –––, 2007b, “Racist organ donors and saving lives”, Bioethics , 21(2): 63–74. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8519.2007.00526.x
• –––, 2011, Ethics and the Acquisition of Organs , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Wilkinson, T.M. and I.D. Dittmer, 2016, “Should Children Be Given Priority in Kidney Allocation?” Journal of Bioethical Inquiry , 13: 535–545. doi:10.1007/s11673-016-9737-x
• Wilkinson, T.M. and A. Moore, 1997, “Inducement in Research”, Bioethics , 11(5): 373–389. doi:10.1111/1467-8519.00078
• Williams, N.J., 2016, “Should Deceased Donation be Morally Preferred in Uterine Transplantation Trials?”, Bioethics , 30: 415–424. doi: 10.1111/bioe.12247
• –––, 2018, “On Harm Thresholds and Living Organ Donation: must the living donor benefit, on balance, from his donation”, Medicine, Healthcare and Philosophy , 21: 11–22. doi: 10.1007/s11019-017-9778-x
• De Wispelaere, J. and L. Stirton, 2010, “Advance Commitment: An Alternative Approach to the Family Veto Problem in Organ Procurement”, Journal of Medical Ethics , 36: 180–3. doi:10.1136/jme.2009.032912
• Zambrano, A., 2017, “Patient Autonomy and the Family Veto Problem in Organ Procurement”, Social Theory and Practice , 43: 180–200. doi:10.5840/soctheorpract20174318

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• British Transplantation Society (last accessed 5 June 2021)
• European Society for Organ Transplantation (last accessed 5 June 2021)
• Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation
• Health Resources and Services Administration, U.S Government Information on Organ Donation and Transplanation (last accessed 5 May 2021)
• Japan Organ Transplant Network (last accessed 5 June 2021)
• Transplantation Society of Australia and New Zealand (TSANZ), Clinical Guidelines for Organ Transplantation from Deceased Donors (last accessed 5 May 2021)
• U.K. Department of Health, Organs for Transplant: a report from the organ donation taskforce , January 2008. [PDF]
• U.K. National Health Service Blood and Transplant (NHSBT)
• U.K., Nuffield Council on Bioethics, Human Bodies: donation for medicine and research , October 2011. [PDF]
• World Medical Association Statement on Organ and Tissue Donation , adopted by the 63rd WMA General Assembly, Bangkok, Thailand, October 2012; revised by the 68th WMA General Assembly, Chicago, U.S., October 2017.

beneficence, principle of | coercion | death: definition of | decision-making capacity | ethics, biomedical: clinical research | ethics, biomedical: justice, inequality, and health | ethics, biomedical: privacy and medicine | informed consent | justice: distributive | libertarianism | mental disorder | paternalism | respect | sale of human organs

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Laura O’Donovan and Nicola Williams for providing research support.

Copyright © 2021 by Martin Wilkinson < m . wilkinson @ auckland . ac . nz > Stephen Wilkinson < s . wilkinson2 @ lancaster . ac . uk >

• Accessibility

Support SEP

Mirror sites.

View this site from another server:

• Info about mirror sites

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2023 by The Metaphysics Research Lab , Department of Philosophy, Stanford University

Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

Organ Donation Essay

Organ donation is a noble act of transplanting healthy organs from a donor to a patient receiver. Human body organs and tissues that function properly are collected and transplanted into patients’ bodies to save their lives. In most cases, organ donations are performed after the donor’s death. But some organs can be donated even when the donors are alive. Kids learning activities like organ donation essays will help them attain more scientific knowledge and better their academic performances.

Superheroes are not born; they are made by society. By participating in activities like organ donations, people can save lives and turn themselves into real superheroes. The following short essay in English on the necessity of performing organ donation in society will help kids improve their basic knowledge about the human body. BYJU’S importance of organ donation essay for kids will also help develop social consciousness and humanity in their minds.

Table of Contents

What is organ donation, necessity of organ donation in the society.

Organ donation can be defined as the process of transplanting an organ or tissue from one person to another person through surgical methods. The recipient performs the transplantation because of organ failure or damage caused by disease or injury. Organ donation marks the advancement of science in the medical sector.

People of all ages can perform organ donation. Organ donations are completely voluntary actions, and people cannot be compelled to engage in these activities. Illiteracy, lack of proper guidance, lack of awareness, the fright of surgery, etc., are some of the major reasons that stop a person from engaging in such charity practices. People hesitate to donate organs because of their misunderstandings related to organ donation procedures. Myths and misconceptions about organ donation have to be cleared from people’s minds. Teachers can direct their students to visit online resources like BYJU’S essay on health education to learn more about human health.

The kidney, eyes, liver, heart, skin tissues, small intestines, and lungs are some of the organs that people commonly donate. Participation in organ donation is a great form of charity and social service. It marks the contribution of individuals after death. We all should pledge to donate our organs to save lives and promote the importance of organ donation by participating in various campaigns.

World Organ Donation Day is observed annually on August 13. It is celebrated by people worldwide to raise awareness about the necessity of organ donation in society. The World Health Organisation and other health organisations conduct live classes on health-related topics to educate people. Essay writing activities on topics like the necessity of organ donation in society and organ donation essay are excellent tools for teaching the little ones about the process and importance of organ donations. For more essays, worksheets and stories , visit BYJU’S website.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is organ donation.

Organ donation is the practice of surgically transplanting an organ or tissue from one person to another person.

When is World Organ Donation Day?

August 13 is observed as World Organ Donation Day.

What do children learn from BYJU’S organ donation essay?

BYJU’S organ donation essay provides an opportunity for kids to attain knowledge of the human organ system. Practising essay writing activities will help them perform well in their academics and score good marks.

Related Links

• Share Share

Register with BYJU'S & Download Free PDFs

Register with byju's & watch live videos.

Organ Transplantation and Donation Essay

Political implications of organ transplantation in the us and uk, border security issues in us, transnational public health issues, black market on organ transplant in the us and uk, laws if they negatively or positively affecting organ transplant., works cited.

Organ transplantation has raised a number of issues in many governments and states in the world. This is because the practice involves human lives, and therefore, caution must be taken in order to respect human dignity. In many cases, people have been involved in the exercise out of their knowledge hence calling for governments’ intervention to save the situation. For instance, people have been cheated or enticed with monetary gifts to donate their body organs to other people.

Politics have played key roles in transplantation of body organs both in United States of America and the United Kingdom. Political leaders have come out clearly to defend human rights through creating legislations for the practice (Shibles and Maier 63). This is important as people may be involved in human trafficking in order to kill and extract organs illegally.

Therefore, governments have come up with rules that govern donation and transplantation of organs to safe guard other people. Politicians in these countries have taken advantage of the situation to gather support from people as they advocate for their needs. This means that leaders who support donation of organs seem to care about people’s lives. On the other hand, people love politicians who advocate for the rights of everyone hence considering them for bigger positions in the political arena.

Border security in United States has been contemplated by increase in organ transplantation in various states. This is due to the fact that United States advocates for human rights and dignity hence they prohibit any illegal practice that can be harmful to human beings. Wealthy patients pay a lot of money to get body organs if they fail to get free donations.

This has seen many brokers venture in organ trade whereby they acquire organs from people in developing countries at low prices and take them to hospitals in United States of America for transplantation. This is very inhuman since selfish people take advantage of poverty in some countries to oppress the poor. The government of the United States of America together with law enforcers faces a lot of challenges in combatting the crime within their borders (Shelton and Balint 48).

This means that the business is discouraged although people may succeed to sneak illegal organs into the country through other means. The government has to do everything within its reach to make sure that people do not have transplants from unknown destinations. This can be achieved by involving health practitioners in fighting the crime by making sure that organs are attained in an appropriate manner.

Since people donate organs to others regardless of their locations, nations need to be cautious in order to avoid spread of diseases in the process. There is the issue on spreading of communicable diseases across national borders and this may be fatal to the recipient nation. In addition, people may be faced by gross human trafficking in situations where certain people are known to have specific characteristics desired by patients.

For instance, in some communities tend to have immunity against some conditions due to their lifestyles. This may pose a great danger to citizens as they may be targeted for their healthy organs (Klein, Lewis and Madsen 98). Therefore, governments should work together to make sure that they help in safeguarding health conditions within their states. In addition, they should make sure that people are not exposed to harassment.

Nations should protect donation and transplantation of organs within their personal borders in order to safeguards rights of their neighbors. This is vital because transnational issues may hinder regional developments or even result to war between neighbors. People may develop animosity following issues of extracting organs by force hence demoralizing members of neighboring communities.

Black markets are illegal markets which governments are left out of the business activities. People involved in black markets do not pay taxes to the government and this affects economies as tax free goods find their way to the market. This means that people may opt for cheaper goods hence reducing demand for legal goods hence affecting revenue generation by countries. In United States of America and the United Kingdom, people have taken initiatives in organ trading without following the right procedure set by governments.

People have been able to acquire body organs and stock them in organ banks in various hospitals without paying taxes or following the right medical procedures set by governments (petechuk 76). In fact, organs have been imported from other continents into United States of America and United kingdoms without clearance from the government.

In most cases business people collude with law enforcers and revenue collectors to illegally import human organs into those states. Organ donation is a vital process and governments should not allow illegal practices because it might end up affecting people in a great manner.

Laws set by both the United States of America and United Kingdom aims at ensuring that the activity is safe for humans. For example, there are laws aimed at ensuring that their citizens receive quality organs whenever need for transplants arise (David and Price 98). They achieve this by involving leaders from donor nations to ensure that they monitor the donation process. This includes ensuring that only people with good health records are allowed to donate body organs.

This is important for both the donor and the recipient since they are involved in the transplant directly. This means that donors may end up complicating their health conditions after donating crucial organs. Doctors should be involved in examining donors to advise them on whether to donate an organ or not depending with their body conditions (petechuk 76).

Governments should make sure that medical practitioners do not take part in illegal extraction or transplantation of organs. Laws should be set up by leaders to make sure that medical practitioners involved in illegal organ deals are punished. This will caution doctors and patients from encouraging the illegal business hence helping in combatting crimes against human rights.

Organ transplantation is among the latest development in the field of medicine. Doctors have been able to save people’s lives in the recent past whereby people donate body organs to institutions. However, a lot of activities have emerged involving organ donations leading to situations where people sell their organs. Governments had to intervene to bring sanity in countries as people could risk losing their lives for money.

Regulations have been set up by governments to make sure that donation is guided by moral principles. In addition, qualified personnel have to be involved in advising and extracting organs from donors. Diseases control units have been set up to ensure that diseases are not transmitted through organ transplantation.

David P and Price T. Legal and Ethical Aspects of Organ Transplantation . New Jersey: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Print.

Klein, Andrew, Lewis Clive J and Madsen Joren C. Organ Transplantation: A Clinical Guide. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Print.

Petechuk, David. Organ Transplantation . New York: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006. Print.

Shelton, Wayne N and Balint John. The Ethics Of Organ Transplantation, Volume 7. London: Emerald Group Publishing, 2001. Print.

Shibles, W and Maier Barbara. The Philosophy and Practice of Medicine and Bioethics: A Naturalistic-Humanistic Approach . Michigan: Springer, 2010. Print

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, December 8). Organ Transplantation and Donation. https://ivypanda.com/essays/organ-transplantation-and-donation-essay/

"Organ Transplantation and Donation." IvyPanda , 8 Dec. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/organ-transplantation-and-donation-essay/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Organ Transplantation and Donation'. 8 December.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Organ Transplantation and Donation." December 8, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/organ-transplantation-and-donation-essay/.

1. IvyPanda . "Organ Transplantation and Donation." December 8, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/organ-transplantation-and-donation-essay/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Organ Transplantation and Donation." December 8, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/organ-transplantation-and-donation-essay/.

• Organ Donation: Postmortem Transplantation
• Organ Donation and Transplantation Medicine
• The COVID-19 Impact on Organ Donation
• The Ethics of Organ Donation in Modern World
• Importance of Organ Donation
• Organ Donation: Donor Prevalence in Saudi Arabia
• Organ Donation: Importance Information
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Organ Transplantation
• Researching of Xenograft and Organ Donation
• Motivation in Human Organs Transplantation
• Global Governance in Local Context: Changing the Basic Education Policy in Oman
• Evidence based decision making and policy making
• The policy evaluation methods
• Comparing the Protests in Egypt and Syria
• Federal Government and education

Organ Donation Essay

Table of Contents

Organ donation has proved to be a miracle for the society. Organs such as kidneys, heart, eyes, liver, small intestine, bone tissues, skin tissues and veins are donated for the purpose of transplantation. The donor gives a new life to the recipient by the way of this noble act. Organ donation is encouraged worldwide. The government of different countries have put up different systems in place to encourage organ donation. However, the demand for organs is still quite high as compared to their supply. Effective steps must be taken to meet this ever-increasing demand.

Fill Out the Form for Expert Academic Guidance!

Please indicate your interest Live Classes Books Test Series Self Learning

Verify OTP Code (required)

I agree to the terms and conditions and privacy policy .

Fill complete details

Target Exam ---

Long and Short Essay on Organ Donation in English

We have provided below short and long essay on organ donation in simple English for your information and knowledge.

After going through the essays you will know the significance of organ donation for someone in need, the procedure involved, under what circumstances is it illegal to donate an organ and what are safe physical criterion for organ donation.

You can use these organ donation essay in your school college events wherein you need to give a speech, write an essay or take part in debate.

Essay on Organ Donation in 200 words

Organ donation is done by both living and deceased donors. The living donors can donate one of the two kidneys, a lung or a part of a lung, one of the two lobes of their liver, a part of the intestines or a part of the pancreas. While a deceased donor can donate liver, kidneys, lungs, intestines, pancreas, cornea tissue, skin tissue, tendons and heart valves.

The organ donation process varies from country to country. The process has broadly been classified into two categories – Opt in and Opt out. Under the opt-in system, one is proactively required to register for donation of his/ her organs while in the opt-out system, every individual becomes a donor post death unless he/she opts-out of it.

There is a huge demand for organs. It is sad how several people in different parts of the world die each year waiting for organ transplant. The governments of different countries are taking steps to raise the supply of organs and in certain parts the number of donors has increased. However, the requirement of organs has simultaneously increased at a much rapid speed.

Each one of us should come forward and register to donate organs after death. “Be an organ donor, all it costs is a little love”.

Also Check: Essay on Organ Trafficking

Essay on Organ Donation in 300 words

Organ donation takes place when an organ of a person’s body is removed with his consent while he is alive or with the consent of his family member after his death for the purpose of research or transplant. Kidneys, liver, lungs, heart, bones, bone marrow, corneas, intestines and skin are transplanted to give new life to the receiver.

Organ Donation Process

• Living Donors

Living donors require undergoing thorough medical tests before organ donation. This also includes psychological evaluation of the donor to ensure whether he understands the consequences of donation and truly consents for it.

• Deceased Donors

In case of the deceased donors, it is first verified that the donor is dead. The verification of death is usually done multiple times by a neurologist. It is then determined if any of his/ her organs can be donated.

After death, the body is kept on a mechanical ventilator to ensure the organs remain in good condition. Most organs work outside the body only for a couple of hours and thus it is ensured that they reach the recipient immediately after removal.

Gap between Demand and Supply

The demand for organs is considerably higher than the number of donors around the world. Each year several patients die waiting for donors. Statistics reveal that in India against an average annual demand for 200,000 kidneys, only 6,000 are received. Similarly, the average annual demand for hearts is 50,000 while as low as 15 of them are available.

The need for organ donation needs to be sensitized among the public to increase the number of donors. The government has taken certain steps such as spreading awareness about the same by way of TV and internet. However, we still have a long way to go.

Organ donation can save a person’s life. Its importance must not be overlooked. A proper system should be put in place for organ donation to encourage the same.

Essay on Organ Donation in 400 words

Organ donation is the process of allowing organ or tissue to be removed surgically from one person to place it in another person or to use it for research purpose. It is done by the consent of donor in case he is alive or by the consent of next of kin after death. Organ donation is encouraged worldwide.

Kidneys, liver, lungs, heart, bones, bone marrow, skin, pancreas, corneas, intestines and skin are commonly used for transplantation to render new life to the recipient. Organ donation is mostly done after the donor’s death. However, certain organs and tissues such as a kidney, lobe of a lung, portion of the liver, intestine or pancreas can be donated by living donors as well.

Organ Donation Consent Process

There are two types of consents when it comes to organ donation. These are the explicit consent and the presumed consent.

• Explicit Consent: Under this the donor provides a direct consent through registration and carrying out other required formalities based on the country.
• Presumed Consent: This does not include a direct consent from the donor or the next of kin. As the name suggests, it is assumed that the donation would have been allowed by the potential donor in case consent was pursued.

Among the possible donors approximately twenty five percent of the families deny donation of their loved one’s organs.

Organ Donation in India

• Legalised by Law

Organ donations are legal as per the Indian law. The Transplantation of Human Organs Act (THOA), 1994 enacted by the government of India permits organ donation and legalizes the concept of brain death.

• Documentation and Formalities

The donor is required to fill a prescribed form. The same can be taken from the hospital or other medical facility approached for organ donation or can be downloaded from the ministry of health and family welfare government of India’s website.

In case of a deceased donor, a written consent from the lawful custodian is required in the prescribed application form.

As is the case with the rest of the world, the demand of organs in India is much higher compared to their supply. There is a major shortage of donated organs in the country. Several patients are on the wait list and many of them succumb to death waiting for organ transplant.

The government of India is making efforts to spread awareness about organ transplant to encourage the same. However, it needs to take effective steps to raise the number of donors.

Essay on Organ Donation in 500 words

Organ donation refers to the process of giving organs or tissues to a living recipient who requires a transplant. Organ donation is mostly done after death. However, certain organs can be donated even by a living donor.

The organs that are mostly used for the purpose of transplant include kidney, liver, heart, pancreas, intestines, lungs, bones and bone marrow. Each country follows its own procedure for organ donation. Here is a look at how different countries encourage and process organ donation.

Organ Donation Process – Opt In and Opt Out

While certain countries follow the organ donation opt-in procedure others have the opt-out procedure in place. Here is a look at the difference between these two processes of organ donation:

• Opt In System: In the opt-in system, people are required to proactively sign up for the donation of their organs after death.
• Opt Out System: Under this system, organ donation automatically occurs unless a person specifically makes a request to opt out before death.

Organ Donation in Different Countries

India follows the opt-in system when it comes to organ donation. Anyone who wishes to donate organs needs to fill a prescribed form available on the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare Government of India’s website.

In order to control organ commerce and encourage donation after brain death, the government of India came up with the law, The Transplantation of Human Organs Act in the year 1994. This brought about a considerable change in terms of organ donation in the country.

Spain is known to be the world leader in organ donations. It follows the opt-out system for organ donation.

• United States

The need for organs in the United States is growing at a rapid pace. Though there has been a rise in the number of organ donors, however, the number of patients waiting for the organs has increased at a much higher rate. Organ donation in the United States is done only with the consent of the donor or their family. However, several organizations here are pushing for the opt-out organ donation.

• United Kingdom

Organ donation in the United Kingdom is voluntary. Individuals who want to donate their organs after death can register for the same.

This is the only country that has been able to overcome the shortage of transplant organs. It has a legal payment system for organ donation and is also the only country that has legalized organ trade.

Organ donation is quite low in Japan as compared to other western countries. This is mainly due to cultural reasons, distrust in western medicines and a controversial organ transplant that took place in 1968.

In Columbia, the ‘Law 1805’ passed in August 2016, introduced the opt-out policy for organ donation.

Chile opted for the opt-out policy for organ donation under the, ‘Law 20,413’ wherein all the citizens above the age of 18 years will donate organs unless they specifically deny it before death.

Most of the countries around the world suffer from low organ donor rate. The issue must be taken more seriously. Laws to increase the rate of organ donation must be put in place to encourage the same.

Essay on Organ Donation in 600 words

Organ Donation is the surgical removal of a living or dead donor’s organs to place them in the recipient to render him/her a new life. Organ donation has been encouraged worldwide. However, the demand of human organs far outweighs the supply. Low rate of organ donation around the world can be attributed to various reasons. These reasons are discussed below in detail.

Teleological Issues

The moral status of the black market organ donation is debatable. While some argue in favour of it others are absolutely against the concept. It has been seen that those who donate their organs are generally from the poor section of the society and those who can afford these are quite well off. There is thus an imbalance in the trade.

It has been observed that those who can purchase the organs are taking advantage of the ones who are desperate to sell. This is said to be one of the reasons for the rising inequality of status between the rich and the poor. On the other hand, it is argued that those who want to sell their organs should be allowed to do so as preventing them from it is only contributing to their status as impoverished. Those who are in favour of the organ trade also argue that exploitation is preferable to death and hence organ trade must be legalized. However, as per a survey, later in life the living donors regret their decision of donating their organs.

Several cases of organ theft have also come forward. While those in support of the legalization of organ market say that this happens because of the black market nature of trade while others state that legalizing it would only result in the rise of such crimes as the criminal can easily state that the organ being sold has not been stolen.

Deontological Issues

These are defined by a person’s ethical duty to take action. Almost all the societies in the world believe that donating organs voluntarily is ethically permissible. Many scholars believe that everyone should donate their organs after death.

However, the main issue from the standpoint of deontological ethics is the debate over the definitions of life, death, body and human. It has been argued that organ donation is an act of causing self harm. The use of cloning to come up with organs with a genotype identical to the recipient is another controversial topic.

Xenotransplantation which is the transfer of animal organs into human bodies has also created a stir. Though this has resulted in increased supply of organs it has also received a lot of criticism. Certain animal rights groups have opposed the sacrifice of animals for organ donation. Campaigns have been launched to ban this new field of transplantation.

Religious Issues

Different religious groups have different viewpoints regarding organ donation. The Hindu religion does not prohibit people from donating organs. The advocates of the Hindu religion state that it is an individual choice. Buddhists share the same view point.

The Catholics consider it as an act of love and charity. It is morally and ethically acceptable as per them. The Christian Church, Islam, United Methodists and Judaism encourage organ donation. However, Gypsies tend to oppose it as they believe in afterlife. The Shintos are also against it as they believe that injuring a dead body is a heinous crime.

Apart from this, the political system of a country also impacts organ donation. The organ donation rate can increase if the government extends proper support. There needs to be a strong political will to ensure rise in the transplant rate. Specialized training, care, facilities and adequate funding must be provided to ensure a rise.

The demand for organs has always been way higher than their supply due to the various issues discussed above. There is a need to focus on these issues and work upon them in order to raise the number of organ donors.

Essay on Organ Donation FAQs

How do you write an organ donation essay.

To write an organ donation essay, start with an introduction explaining its importance, discuss benefits, address common concerns, and conclude with a call to action for readers to consider becoming donors.

What is a short note on organ donation?

Organ donation involves willingly giving one's organs after death to save lives. It's a selfless act that can bring hope and health to those in need.

How important is organ donation?

Organ donation is crucial as it saves lives by providing organs to individuals suffering from organ failure, offering them a chance for a healthier and longer life.

What is the aim of organ donation?

The aim of organ donation is to provide organs and tissues from willing donors to those in need, improving the quality of life and increasing survival rates for recipients.

What are the 4 types of organ donation?

The four types of organ donation include deceased donation (after death), living donation (from a living person), paired exchange (swapping organs between two donor-recipient pairs), and directed donation (to a specific person).

What is the concept of organ donation?

Organ donation is the voluntary act of giving one's organs or tissues to save or enhance the lives of others, often occurring after death or, in some cases, while the donor is still alive.

Which organ Cannot be donated?

The brain cannot be donated for transplantation. While other organs like the heart, liver, kidneys, and lungs can be donated, the brain's complex functions make it ineligible for donation.

Related content

Talk to our academic expert!

Language --- English Hindi Marathi Tamil Telugu Malayalam

Get access to free Mock Test and Master Class

Register to Get Free Mock Test and Study Material

Offer Ends in 5:00

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Wiley-Blackwell Online Open

View on donated life: Construction of philosophical ethics on human organ donation

En‐chang li.

1 Health and Bioethics Center, Wenzhou Medical University, China

Wen‐pei Zhu

2 Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, China

With the emergence of organ donation and donation technology, the previous indivisibility of the human body becomes divisible, and different human organs form a new life subject. With reference to specific case studies in China, a new life, consisting of donated organs from different bodies by donation, can be called “donated life.” Donated life is a win‐win action between altruism and egoism, that is, to save the lives of others and to regenerate the organs of donors or their relatives. Due to the emergence of this kind of life, traditional social ethics theories based on the marriage‐related family find it difficult to difficult to explain the new realities. Thus, new thinking about social ethics is necessary.

1. INTRODUCTION

Organ donation and transplantation, for donors, is a kind of helplessness from death, while for recipients, it represents the hope of survival. The technology of organ transplantation provides a place for philosophers and social scientists to structure new concepts and theories. We have previously put forward a “new view on life” and “new view on filial piety,” 1 which are helpful in understanding the value of organ donation. But now it seems that these previous studies are far from enough. It is necessary to build the corresponding ethical concept of philosophy of science and technology, to accept and support the promotion of the technology in public health, its acceptance in mass psychology, and its advocacy in social culture, and subsequently, to establish support mechanisms in the social system. It is of great practical significance for medical ethics scholars to go deep into the subject and experience the actual and moral situations of organ donation and transplantation for academic research and theoretical innovation. (Human organ donations include cadaver organ donation and living organ donation, and the organ donation in this article refers to cadaver organ donation.) We shall examine two case studies.

2. “DONATED LIFE”: A NEW CONCEPT OF LIFE THAT URGENTLY NEEDS TO BE ESTABLISHED

2.1. case 1: renewal of guoguo 2.

Guoguo, named Yu Yixuan, a 13‐year‐old girl of sunny disposition from Chongqing, China, liked writing novels, poetry, and drawing pictures. Guoguo always felt that time was precious, and cherished every minute. Unfortunately, she left us forever. On the morning of September 21, 2016, Guo Shuang, her mother, a researcher on child psychology, got a call from the schoolteacher, saying that her child could not stop vomiting and had felt uncomfortable since midnight. She suggested the parents send Guoguo to the hospital immediately. At noon, the child was sent directly to the intensive care unit due to respiratory failure.

It was so sudden that Guo Shuang and her husband were totally unprepared. The top authoritative chiropractic neurologists in Chongqing advised that there was no opportunity for an operation.

The family fell into the depths of despair overnight. On the early morning of September 22, the ICU director expressed his condolences to them for losing their child and hoped they would accept the brutal fact. The director also told them that if they were willing, there was another option to keep Guoguo alive. Before the director mentioned the words, they suddenly understand the implication and blurted out, “Organ donation, we agree.”

From that moment on, they calmed down, and, even found some small comfort in their hearts. “Absolutely, our daughter can continue to live in this way, and she will be born again!” “Her heart can beat in another person’s chest, her liver can save one who waits in hope, her kidneys can save two lives, and her corneas can help two people to regain their eyesight. Her organs will be in the bodies of several people who can go on to live healthy lives… ,”

The couple were invited to the 2017 Memorial and Promotion Campaign of China Human Organ Donation and delivered a speech. “This is the most valuable, meaningful and right decision we’ve made in our lives. Looking at the smiling faces of the recipients, we feel sheer joy deep in our hearts. So we are grateful for the program of organ donation, grateful to the people who accept our child's organs, so that our daughter's life can be reborn in another form. More families can find happiness with these donations." The mother added, “The smiling faces of the donees and their families, who have regained their new lives, are also the best gift for me and my family.”

The "renewal" of Guoguo and her mother's words totally reflect the value of organ donation in this real case. Also it shows the importance of timely communication with donor families, such as parents, during the donation process.

With the development of three technologies of vascular anastomosis, organ preservation and immunosuppression, human organ transplantation technology is developing and maturing. At present, 1.3 million people worldwide have received organ transplants, and more than 50,000 people receive organ transplantation globally each year. After careful consideration, we found that organ transplant technology not only saves lives and restores health, but at the same time gives people more philosophical and ethical information on the life sciences.

The previous view on life held that human life is a complex system with a multilayered structure, which has an essential unity, not separable into parts. 3 The emergence of organ donation technology changed people’s views on the relationship between the whole and the parts in a life system, from an inseparable unity to a local separability, from fragility to tenacity. In other words, the original unified integrity of a human body became independent, detachable parts. Led by modern science and technology, the independent organs in vitro can live as an independent unit for a certain time, which creates the conditions and possibilities for the organs from a dying body to be transplanted into another body. So a new life is recreated. This new reborn life created by donation can be called “donated life,” which forms the viewpoint which we call “view on donated life.” This profound change in human organs and life brought about by science and technology has to become fundamentally reacquainted with the value of philosophy and social science. This opens the way for a new moral consensus, 4 so as to support and standardize it.

Life as traditionally understood stems from heredity and reproduction, and is produced by the sexual intercourse of parents. It is the result of natural evolution and is the most brilliant flower in the universe. However, with the development of science and technology, the method of transplantation can be used to endow the dying with a new life. This renewal, on the premise of other organ donation, as a new way of life, changes the model of human life. “Reborn life” refers to the recipient's life after organ transplantation, from the viewpoint of subject consciousness. It may also be treated as a new kind of shared life, because from the perspective of the completeness of life’s constituent, it is a new life form of “you have me, I have you.” It explores a new form which mixes lives together, and provides a new way to safeguard the human being. It has enriched the connotation of philosophy and social science. It has a huge impact on and challenge to traditional social culture. There is a need to strengthen philosophical and social science research on donated life in China.

3. LIFE DONATION IS A WIN‐WIN BEHAVIOR FOR BOTH SIDES

In recent years, a wide variety of discussions have focused on the substantial changes that artificial life has made in social ethical relations and related issues of social ethics. By contrast, attention to changes in the fundamental social ethics of life caused by life donation is far from enough, while ethical issues in the process of organ donation and transplantation operation are much discussed. Artificial life generated by technology and other means is on the level of human genes and cells, when the person's life consciousness, also termed personality, has not yet formed, so it only involves such issues as moral relations between the maker and the cellular genetic source, not the conscious, ethical, and emotional problems of the main body itself. By contrast, organ transplant life is different. Its locus is life with subject consciousness, namely life with personality, and will naturally involve such problems as moral relations and emotional entanglements, which is the most fundamental difference between organ donation and other forms of artificial life.

Human life can continue with sustenance from transplanted organs, even when important organs essential for the maintenance of life fail to work and/or are damaged. The fundamental change in organ value must be simultaneously paralleled by changes in people’s values. Modern science and technology enable the separation of the human body into independent survivable life organs when transplanted to another person, thus facilitating the sharing of life between donor and recipient. It is a win‐win situation of modern science and technology, and human life. In the past, many academics have held that “altruism is one of the motivations of donation." 5 “Donating life” has become an important form of life existence, health restoration and life regeneration. Therefore, it is necessary to put forward the notion of "donated life," which will be further explored in the second case study.

3.1. Case 2: Three letters from Wu Yue‐the recipient, to the donor 6

In September 2013, Wu Yue, a girl from Nanjing, China with an incurable disease of lymphatic leiomyoma, had transplantation surgery and received the lungs of a shepherd boy who accidentally died in his early teens. Wu Yue called the donor boy Brother Cowboy, and wrote him a letter every year for three years. She said in one of the letters, “I often imagine what you are like. I imagine your dark skin, small but strong body, your smile and your shining teeth. You must have been an innocent and loving boy. How I desire to show you the world. It is far bigger and more complicated than the one you ever lived in. I also hope you can still love the world after you have seen its reality. You will still be honest and true to yourself. Beside my parents and friends, you are the only one to support me in my persistence in life, and you are also my most loyal listener.” In another letter, she wrote, “Shortly after the last letter, we attended the 15th anniversary of the Lung Transplant Center of Wu Xi People’s Hospital. That was my first live broadcast, with no experience but lots of problems. Everyone present gave me great encouragement and respect, both doctors and peer patients. People were so excited to participate! Seeing so many young and vigorous faces, do you have the same feeling as I, amazed at the magic that life continues? I don’t know how your lungs struggled to work with the ventilator to sustain my life when I was in a coma at the Gu Lou Hospital in Nanjing. At that moment, I felt that I was the closest to the situation when you were leaving. At that moment, I felt like I could feel your desperation to live. With that strong desire for survival, and the support you gave me, I woke up on the 14th night of coma. All the doctors present were amazed at the “incredible” miracle. There were so many professional doctors caring about my illness and praying for me. I know I was not alone in the fight. But it was surprising that the strength of us two was so strong.” In the third letter, she wrote, “Before I met you, I was just an ordinary girl. Because of you, my life is different. I get a lot of attention. More and more media contact me, and more and more peer patients chat with me to share their stories. I am so happy and so grateful to be needed, because I can share my story with them. At the same time, I also know I have a long way to go and I need time to become more mature. Fortunately, you are with me, and I can be true to myself, and actually do something to really help others. It is far more important for people to learn more about organ donation than to know me personally.”

These letters reveal the heartfelt gratitude of the recipients, and illustrate the greatness and nobility of organ donation. They help people further understand that organ donation has contributed enormously to the continuity of human life and improvement in quality of life, which requires public acceptance and support. “Donated life,” as an important interdisciplinary concept for life philosophy of natural science and social science, is a new concept that requires urgent and systematic conceptualization and theorization.

4. SOCIAL DETERMINANTS FOR DONATION

Donated life increases the weight of social factors in the constitution, rebirth and nurturing of human life, and social relationships become essential in the nature of donated life. With the combination of the organs and tissues from two persons as the essential elements, donated life shows a different formation of life from the traditional pattern that features just the parents’ bisexual reproduction. More specifically, donated life is based on the combination of two lives respectively resulting from bisexual reproduction, constituting an alternative style of bio‐philosophy in terms of life formation, rebirth of life, health restoration, and treatment of diseases.

On the other hand, due to the fact that generation of this life is based on social relations, various factors like the value orientation of social ethics, the state of social relations, the nature and mechanism of the medical system could constitute decisive influences on its survival. The following questions deserve serious consideration and thorough study. Will society allow another person to donate his or her body organs? How to donate? Which waiting recipient can get priority for donation? What rewards could the donor and his/her families get? These problems, which originally belonged in the category of social and political economy, now directly affect whether donated life can survive. In a sense, the system based on social ethics, which provides human life with an alternative form of existence, is the social determinant, and thereafter becomes the basis of a new social relation. The former theory of social ethics in the framework of family which features marriage and bisexual intercourse cannot explain and summarize the new relationship: new thinking is needed.

In 2015, China successfully implemented organ sources, and achieved a transformation from the use of death penalty organs to citizens' donation organs, which has won the commendations from relevant international organizations. There are still some issues with organ shortage, for example, in 2017, data from organ donation administration departments in China showed there were 5,146 human organ donors in China, about 16,000 organ transplant operations were performed, but 300,000 people needed organ transplants that year, and the satisfaction rate was about 1 in 19. Donation‐orientated principles, policies, regulations and mechanism still need further improvement, which is a problem for motivating potential donors and establishing an efficient and effective donation system. This is an international problem which accounts for a worldwide shortage of organs. New solutions need to be further explored. 7

Biographies

En ‐ chang Li is director of the Health and Bioethics Research Center, Wenzhou Medical University. His research areas are bioethics and humanistic medicine.

Yi Yang was awarded her PhD from Wuhan University in 2013. She is currently a lecturer at Wenzhou Medical University in the Health and Life Ethical Center, School of Marxism. Her research fields include philosophy of science, philosophy of language and bioethics.

Wen ‐ pei Zhu is a lecturer at the College of International Exchange, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University. Her research areas are medical management and traditional Chinese medicine.

Li E‐c, Yang Y, Zhu W‐p. View on donated life: Construction of philosophical ethics on human organ donation . Bioethics . 2020; 34 :318–321. 10.1111/bioe.12732 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]

This study was supported by The National Social Science Fund of China (No. 18BZX120, to L.E.).

The copyright line for this article was changed on 24 December 2020 after original online publication.

1 Enchang, L., Pengpeng, J., Jun, W., Linshan, W., Wujun, X., Bin, W. … Lin, W. (2016). Several factors influencing residents' organ donation and the construction of organ donation theoretical system. Journal of Theoretical System of Chinese Health Service Management, 12, 890–941.

2 The case is excerpted from Guoguo’s mother: The brightest star in the night sky, across the sky, shining the entire world. http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4OTM2MzE4OQ==&mxml:id=2650984101&idx=1&sn=b10f4de34d6c0c5e88289ec6274ba42f&chksm=8bea693fbc9de0292e0766ef9f07046e9d47a45eee55a92d4e8c923cd876a5862654c65bebc1&mpshare=1&scene=1&srcxml:id=0112xA2R9LFj9xDBAdTtD71c#rd From "China human organ donation" official WeChat public account, Apr. 21, 2017.

3 He Xinhua & Liu Qi (Eds.) (2002). Medical dialectics. Beijing: Beijing Medical University Press, p. 35–40.

4 Wan Junren (2012). Why justice is so fragile. Beijing: Economic Science Press, p. 241.

5 Irving, M. J., Jan, S., Tong, A., Wong, G., Craig, J. C., Chadban, S., … Howard, K. (2014) What factors influence people’s decisions to register for organ donation? The results of a nominal group study. Transplant International, 27, 617–624. [ PubMed ]

6 The case is excerpted from Dialogue with Wu Hao: The world kisses me with pain, while I want to repay it with songs. http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4OTM2MzE4OQ==&mxml:id=2650984150&idx=1&sn=d36bae621fb421dd5d55de5e4d035497&chksm=8bea694cbc9de05affaca3bdcdfc97ed6bd39983ac3a202cb0ac089f904b540c56df466a5fe2&mpshare=1&scene=1&srcxml:id=0112PFrXqe4mtJY2Zwx6xrNL#rd From "China Human Organ Donation" official WeChat public account, accessed in Apr. 30, 2017.

7 Huang, J. F., & Ye, Q. F. (2017). Establishing the Chinese model of organ donation and transplant system to provide high level ethical transplant service for the Chinese People. Medical Journal of Wuhan University, 38(6), 861–865.

Charita Davis

offers three types of essay writers: the best available writer aka. standard, a top-level writer, and a premium essay expert. Every class, or type, of an essay writer has its own pros and cons. Depending on the difficulty of your assignment and the deadline, you can choose the desired type of writer to fit in your schedule and budget. We guarantee that every writer will be a subject-matter expert with proper writing skills and background knowledge across all high school, college, and university subjects. Also, we don’t work with undergraduates or dropouts, focusing more on Bachelor, Master, and Doctoral level writers (yes, we offer writers with Ph.D. degrees!)

• Terms & conditions
• Privacy policy
• Referral program

Who will write my essay?

On the website are presented exclusively professionals in their field. If a competent and experienced author worked on the creation of the text, the result is high-quality material with high uniqueness in all respects. When we are looking for a person to work, we pay attention to special parameters:

• work experience. The longer a person works in this area, the better he understands the intricacies of writing a good essay;
• work examples. The team of the company necessarily reviews the texts created by a specific author. According to them, we understand how professionally a person works.
• awareness of a specific topic. It is not necessary to write a text about thrombosis for a person with a medical education, but it is worth finding out how well the performer is versed in a certain area;
• terms of work. So that we immediately understand whether a writer can cover large volumes of orders.

Only after a detailed interview, we take people to the team. Employees will carefully select information, conduct search studies and check each proposal for errors. Clients pass anti-plagiarism quickly and get the best marks in schools and universities.

Customer Reviews

Finished Papers

Margurite J. Perez

Customer Reviews

Finished Papers

We use cookies. By browsing the site, you agree to it. Read more »

Bennie Hawra

Estelle Gallagher

Dr.Jeffrey (PhD)

Emilie Nilsson

What We Guarantee

• No Plagiarism
• On Time Delevery
• Privacy Policy
• Complaint Resolution

Customer Reviews

Viola V. Madsen

What is a good essay writing service?

Oddly enough, but many people still have not come across a quality service. A large number of users fall for deceivers who take their money without doing their job. And some still fulfill the agreements, but very badly.

A good essay writing service should first of all provide guarantees:

• confidentiality of personal information;
• for the terms of work;
• for the timely transfer of the text to the customer;
• for the previously agreed amount of money.

The company must have a polite support service that will competently advise the client, answer all questions and support until the end of the cooperation. Also, the team must get out of conflict situations correctly.

It is necessary to have several payment methods on the site to make it easier for the client to transfer money.

And of course, only highly qualified writers with a philological education should be present in the team, who will not make spelling and punctuation errors in the text, checking all the information and not stealing it from extraneous sites.

Jam Operasional (09.00-17.00)

+62 813-1717-0136 (Corporate)                                      +62 812-4458-4482 (Recruitment)

Customer Reviews

Finished Papers

Allene W. Leflore

Gain efficiency with my essay writer. Hire us to write my essay for me with our best essay writing service!

Enhance your writing skills with the writers of penmypaper and avail the 20% flat discount, using the code ppfest20.

PenMyPaper offers you with affordable ‘write me an essay service’

We try our best to keep the prices for my essay writing as low as possible so that it does not end up burning a hole in your pocket. The prices are based on the requirements of the placed order like word count, the number of pages, type of academic content, and many more. At the same time, you can be eligible for some attractive discounts on the overall writing service and get to write with us seamlessly. Be it any kind of academic work and from any domain, our writers will get it done exclusively for you with the greatest efficiency possible.

Customer Reviews

We hire a huge amount of professional essay writers to make sure that our essay service can deal with any subject, regardless of complexity. Place your order by filling in the form on our site, or contact our customer support agent requesting someone write my essay, and you'll get a quote.

Finished Papers

Customer Reviews

• Individual approach
• Fraud protection

There are questions about essay writing services that students ask about pretty often. So we’ve decided to answer them in the form of an F.A.Q.

Is essay writing legitimate?

As writing is a legit service as long as you stick to a reliable company. For example, is a great example of a reliable essay company. Choose us if you’re looking for competent helpers who, at the same time, don’t charge an arm and a leg. Also, our essays are original, which helps avoid copyright-related troubles.

Are your essay writers real people?

Yes, all our writers of essays and other college and university research papers are real human writers. Everyone holds at least a Bachelor’s degree across a requested subject and boats proven essay writing experience. To prove that our writers are real, feel free to contact a writer we’ll assign to work on your order from your Customer area.

Is there any cheap essay help?

You can have a cheap essay writing service by either of the two methods. First, claim your first-order discount – 15%. And second, order more essays to become a part of the Loyalty Discount Club and save 5% off each order to spend the bonus funds on each next essay bought from us.

Can I reach out to my essay helper?

Contact your currently assigned essay writer from your Customer area. If you already have a favorite writer, request their ID on the order page, and we’ll assign the expert to work on your order in case they are available at the moment. Requesting a favorite writer is a free service.

Viola V. Madsen

Finished Papers