Topic > Should Organ Donation Be Mandatory Essay - 1067

Is there any moral dilemma in making it mandatory to provide means of survival for those in need? In the world at any given moment there are countless individuals whose organs are failing to the point that their lives are in danger. In the world at any moment there are also countless healthy individuals and individuals who are breathing their last breath, who possess what the above-mentioned individuals need to survive. Given this truth, we might argue that any retraction on organ donation does not overcome organ donation advocates. We propose that organ donation be mandatory in the event of an individual's death and be considered on a situational basis in cases where the donor is living. Those who are against Munjal et. al. acutely state that: “while we debate whether uDCDD (uncontrolled donation after death circulatory donation) donors are still alive, living donors and patients in need of transplants are dying, yet no patient whose heart has stopped unexpectedly, unlike those under control circumstances, can become a donor. We find this state of affairs counterintuitively incomprehensible and the result is a grave disservice to public understanding of donation and transplantation” (2013). Regarding the topic of organ donation, we must consider that the beneficial act of sacrificing a fraction of the physical self for the survival of another is for the greater good. Considering the latter, if a living person can voluntarily endure the pain of organ donation – as they do – then surely the merit of extracting from an inanimate object (a corpse) should be given without question for the life of another. Furthermore, if it were mandatory that the organs of the deceased were made usable for transplantation, then there would be less need to live. Well, there are many, but perhaps the best argument is simple statistics. Keatings and Smith (2010) state that “the supply of donor organs has not kept pace with the growing need,” which is a real problem. Donated organs represent lives; the lack of donor organs represents possible deaths. Wilkinson and Savulescu (2012) recognize that methods for increasing the number of solid organs for transplantation “conflict with the ethical norms that govern transplantation at various levels,” but point out that “the cost of preserving such norms will be death or the continuing morbidity of many individuals.” These authors use statistics to support their claim, citing, first, that over the past 50 years, solid organ transplantation has extended and improved the quality of life of hundreds of thousands of patients with organ failure [however] There are more than 100,000 patients on the waiting list for a deceased organ donor in the United States: in 2007, 18 patients per day died on the transplant waiting list. In the UK, 450 patients a year die from a