Donation Of Organs

Legal, Ethical And Financial Donation Of Organs

Legal, Ethical And Financial Donation Of Organs

Organ donation is result of advances in medical technology that have made the very viable option. When technology did not exist, was not the problem. Today, an average of 74 people per day receive an organ transplant to save lives, but at same time, an average of 19 people die each day waiting for the transplant that never comes. Entire issue has raised serious ethical concerns and debate over them rages unabated. As more advances are made in areas such as cloning, ethical debate should grow more intense.

Ethical issues are complicated by the debate most salient definitions of certain key terms such as life, human death and body. An example is definition of concept of brain death. People have been confused by issue because public cases of people recovering from coma after many years. Distinction between idea of brain death in the coma and becomes the matter to be clearly defined. THE family is asked to donate body to science of brain-dead family member must be sure there is no hope of recovery.

Organ transplantation is movement of an organ from one body to another or from the donor site on patient's own body, to replace missing or damaged organs of recipient. Emerging field of regenerative medicine is that scientists and engineers to re-create organs from patients' own cells (stem cells or cells extracted from failing organs). Organs or tissues are transplanted into body of same person is called an autograft. Transplants performed between two individuals of same species are called allografts. Allografts can be the source of life or body.

Organs can be transplanted include heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, pancreas, intestine and thymus. Tissues include bones, tendons (both referred to as musculoskeletal grafts), cornea, skin, heart valves, and veins. Globally, kidneys are most commonly transplanted organs, while musculoskeleletal transplants outnumber them more than ten times.

Organ donors can be living, or brain death. Tissues can be recovered from donors who are dead heart - up to 24 hours after cessation of heartbeat. Unlike organs, most tissues (with exception of cornea) can be preserved and stored for up to five years, which means it can be "banked." Transplantation raises the number of bioethical issues, including definition of death, when and how to give consent for an organ to be transplanted and payment of organs for transplantation. Other ethical issues are transplant tourism and more broadly socio-economic context in which removal or transplantation of organs can occur. THE particular problem is trafficking of organs. Some organs cannot be transplanted, as brain.

In U.S., tissue transplants are regulated by U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has strict rules on safety of transplantation, mainly aimed at preventing spread of communicable diseases. Regulations include standards for donor screening and testing, and strict regulations on processing and distribution of tissue grafts. Organ transplants are not regulated by FDA.

Transplantation medicine is one of most difficult and complex areas of modern ...