Do Genetic Relationships Create Moral Obligations in Organ Transplantation?

In 1999, a case was described on national television in which a woman had enlisted onto an international bone marrow registry with the altruistic desire to offer her bone marrow to some unidentified individual in need of a transplant. The potential donor then was notified that she was a compatible m...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics 2002-04, Vol.11 (2), p.153-159
Main Authors: GLANNON, WALTER, ROSS, LAINIE FRIEDMAN
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Altruism
Bioethics
Blood & organ donations
Bone marrow
Directed Tissue Donation
Families
Family
Histocompatibility
Humans
Interpersonal Relations
Kidney transplantation
Kidney transplants
Leukemia
Living Donors - psychology
Moral obligation
Moral Obligations
Morality
Motivation
Siblings
Social Responsibility
Stem cells
Transplantation - psychology
Transplantation - standards
Transplants
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:In 1999, a case was described on national television in which a woman had enlisted onto an international bone marrow registry with the altruistic desire to offer her bone marrow to some unidentified individual in need of a transplant. The potential donor then was notified that she was a compatible match with someone dying from leukemia and gladly donated her marrow, which cured the recipient of the disease. Years later, though, the recipient developed end-stage renal disease (ESRD), a consequence of the high-dose chemotherapy she received earlier to destroy her stem cells and prepare her for the bone marrow transplant. Finding a suitable donor for a kidney transplant proved extremely difficult. Desperate, she requested that the donor registry personnel help her locate the individual who earlier was determined to be a compatible donor and asked this now-identifiable individual to consider donating one of her two normally functioning kidneys for a kidney transplant.
ISSN:0963-1801
1469-2147
DOI:10.1017/S0963180102112084