Penn Bioethicist Tackles Changing Boundaries Of Organ Donation Guidelines

Main Category: Transplants / Organ Donations
Article Date: 14 Aug 2008 - 1:00 PDT

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The babies were dying without life support, they might live just another few minutes. Their families had said goodbye, and wanted their newborns to become organ donors, in hopes of saving another tiny life. But the babies' conditions couldn't meet the normal standards for organ donor eligibility. What to do?

The August 14 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine explores the issue of organ donation after cardiac death through the lens of emotionally charged cases like these, which occurred at the Denver Children's Hospital. In the journal's Perspective Roundtable, Arthur Caplan, PhD, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, weighs in on the ethical considerations of the changing assumptions about when death occurs, the importance of respecting "the dead donor rule" and how to decide which patients are suitable organ donors.

To view video of Caplan's participation in the NEJM Perspective Roundtable on these issues, or to read a transcript of the discussion, which was moderated by physician-author Atul Gawande, visit http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/359/7/669/DC1.

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Penn's School of Medicine is currently ranked #4 in the nation in U.S.News & World Report's survey of top research-oriented medical schools; and, according to most recent data from the National Institutes of Health, received over $379 million in NIH research funds in the 2006 fiscal year. Supporting 1,400 fulltime faculty and 700 students, the School of Medicine is recognized worldwide for its superior education and training of the next generation of physician-scientists and leaders of academic medicine.

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