Abstract

Organ transplantation has given hope when formerly death was inevitable. But the replacement of vital organs highlights major moral and philosophical problems in medicine concerning the role of physicians and nurses, patient autonomy, and respect for the dying and the dead. These include the morality of excising organs from a healthy donor, and related problems regarding an individual’s consent to have organs removed for the benefit of others. These problems are not restricted to live organ donation: cadaveric organ removal raises problems over the definition of death, and raises further questions of fundamental moral and philosophical concern over the procurement and distribution of organs. Guiding decisions in these areas is a mass of empirical knowledge, scientific theory, and philosophical beliefs concerning what it means to say that someone is dead or alive, or whether given persons are competent to make a decision, or whether other considerations should override a competent decision. These questions call for investigation of conceptual matters and moral principles, and are by no means exclusively determined by medical expertise.