Organ Donation in the US - Essay Example

? Organ Donation in the US Task Introduction Organ donation is a term that refers to the donation of a tissue or organ primarilyof the body, from an existing or lifeless individual to an existing recipient who requires a transplant (Childress & Liverman, 2006). It is a procedure of providing an organ or its constituents purposely for transportation into another individual. For one to qualify as a donor, blood and oxygen should flow within the organs pending recuperation to enhance the success of the procedure. After exhaustion of all efforts to save the patient’s life, carrying out of tests is necessary to verify the absence of brain activity and once there is a declaration of brain death, donation becomes a possibility. This paper exemplifies the conditions surrounding organ donation in the US. The donor registry is the determiner on whether the patient has accepted donation. Once there is an absence of a potential donor in the registry, a legal representative generally, a spouse or a relative gets the opportunity to validate the undertaking of donation. After the establishment of the decision, the family provides a social history. It is worth mentioning that organ donation accrues to both the deceased and living as they can donate the liver, kidneys and the heart. Organ donation is rapidly becoming a critical bioethical issue generating from a social perspective (Childress & Liverman, 2006). However, there is the emergence of continued black market for organs and even rumored cases of organ theft such as murder with a motive of organ theft. At times, brain death results to authorized death, but if the heart continues beating and there is still ventilation, all the remaining vital organs may remain solely alive and will not cease to be functional thus providing maximum opportunities to carry out organ transportation. Majority of the organ donation puts into consideration about "brain death". In the United States, the “Uniform Determination of Death Act” defines death as the cessation of the functioning of either, the heart, brain and lungs (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2011). At the start of the 21st century, there was the substantial increase of donation due to cardiac death. In the year 1995, only one person out of one hundred donors was willing to give his/her organs after the announcement of cardiac demise. However, in the year 2008, the figure increased to nearly 11% according to the registry. There is no discrimination of prisoners as recipients of organs in the United States (Childress & Liverman, 2006). Moreover, detailed arrangements required to maintain and trigger an increasing supply of organs that are transplantable result to a fragile social system. Any disturbance in the system such as removal of organs over objections from the family or unexpected death declaration can have an enormous impact on the duly willingness to donate and thus the supply of the organs. This denotes that a successful organ recovery system, whether pertaining to the deceased or live donors, necessitates continued and unstinting efforts to improve and nurture the public understanding. This is the condition necessary for absolute trustworthiness to win the public trust (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2011). People donate organs for various reasons. Personal and familial decisions concerning organ donation grounds based on altruism or a spirit of solidarity, which recognizes that everyone is capable of donating as well as being a potential recipient. In addition, there is an urge to gain some sense out of a tragedy, for example, a parent’s decision to donate organs of their deceased child. It is wise to alleviate the confusion between donation and altruism as it impedes successful resolution of ethnic grievances attributing to the permissibility of different approaches for raising the donation rate (Childress & Liverman, 2006). During the first experiments, organ donation gave rise to many controversies. The individuals who opposed that organ transplants were a possibility criticized the first pioneers in the field of medicine. As of today, about 15000 organ transplants take place yearly in the United States alone (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2011). In 2005, the “New Jersey Company” was legally shut down due to unethical selling of body parts stolen from the corpses. The associated criminals took bones and tissues from the bodies devoid of prior approval of the family members. They also forged the legal documents and occasionally lied about the age and cause of the death (Childress & Liverman, 2006). This resulted in over hundreds of patients receiving bone grafts from unknown donors of whom their medical histories is unknown. These scandals cause the majority of the people to distrust the organ donation concept and thus affecting the patients who need the organ transplants. At present, demand of organ transplants is higher thus leading to a shortage. Many people wait for “lifesaving organs” compared to the numbers of donors. Superior immunosuppressive drugs improved the rates of survival and reduced the negative effects for patients requiring a transplant. In the United States, more transplant centers opened up (Childress & Liverman, 2006). Eventually, transplantation became consistent and synchronized. In the year 1984, the U.S Congress passed the “National Organ Transplant Act” (NOTA). This act called for a workforce to examine the concerns engulfing organ donation. It further led to the ban on sale of transplantation organs in the United States. The policies and practices devised to escalated rates of organ donation and recovery of organs from non-existing persons should be fully compatible with four hindering conditions firmly rooted in the ethical, spiritual and legal traditions of the United States of America. The first condition is the respect for human dignity. Policies and practices in relation to organ donation and recovery should totally respect the dignity of any human being whose body serves as a source of organs. The impression of respecting the decorum of humans comprises several other principles. It largely entails the respect for the aspiration of living persons, which includes their interest in respecting of their wishes after they die and still respecting their bodily remains. The next condition is the respect for the decedents’ wishes. Even though the practices associated with disposal of bodies after decease differ among the societies, the established tradition in United States is respecting the living individual’s wishes pertaining disposition of his or her remains (Childress & Liverman, 2006). Another crucial constraint that should be satisfied by the practices and policies devised to increase donation of organs is dual respect for human remains. Failure to observe proper respect to the human body proofs to be painful to the family of the deceased person whether they observe or not. It is worth denoting that practices associated with Organ recovery must be superbly sensitive to the concerns as failure of that undermines the support from the public. Another condition is the respect for families. Families of non-existing persons play a vital role in the organ recovery system in the United States, as their wishes and feelings necessitate a lot of respect. Families’ interests in governing disposition of the deceased remains and making an informed decision pertaining to organ donation are subordinate to the interest of the non-existing donor who has shown an ardent desire pertaining to donation. Since the bulk of the donors do not show their desire concerning donation; their families are the ultimate decision makers regarding donation. It is worth mentioning the figures of organ donors and transplantations have extremely doubled in the United States over the last twenty years. The claim for organs exceeds their supply. In the year 2006, nearly 29,000 organ transplantations took place and in the month of June the following year, there were 97,000 people readily waiting for organ transplantation. The rapid increase in the organ recovery rate from deceased individuals’ entails the category of “cardiac death” donation. This is a death declared basing on “cardiopulmonary criteria” instead of the criterion used in indicating brain death, which is a permanent loss of the functions of the whole brain (Brezina, 2009). The process of acquiring organs from donors after an occurrence of cardiac death, that is when the heart ceases to beat, is the approach mainly followed in the 1960s. The output for transplanted organs after the occurrence of cardiac death is similar to those organs transplanted when cardiac death occurs. Reemergence of donation after the occurrence of cardiac death as a superior option considers the family or rather the next of kin of excessively brain injuries, instead of “brain dead patients” who desire organ donation as an option for their relative. Donation that results from cardiac death continues to occur in the countries that do not recognize the brain death concept (Brezina, 2009). This donation offers two main benefits. To start with, donation that occurs after cardiac death gives a suitable opening in facilitating and respecting a person’s wish to matters pertaining organ donation. Secondly, the performance of donation when cardiac death occurs raises the availability of organs and tissues for transplantation, followed by general improvements in the wellbeing and health of the individuals requiring them. For this reasons, it is therefore the task of practitioners and institutions to promote the capability in offering donation after the occurrence of cardiac death to all the patients in need (Brezina, 2009). Over 100,000 people are in need of an organ. It happens that at the end of each day another four thousand people join up to the waiting list. Each of them desperately needs either a heart, kidney, liver or any other organ (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2011). Reports authenticate that close to 6,000 inhabitants’ die on a yearly basis without the organ becoming available. It follows that organ donors are in limited supply thus several people are in a distressed want of a transplant compared to the people who are willing to donate. The numbers of organs derived from healthy people are minimal, and the performance of transplants in donors yearly estimates to 6000. Persons at any age can be a potential organ donor, but anyone below the age of 18 requires the parents consent in order to donate. However, certain conditions for example, HIV, cancer or intense infection disqualify organ donation. If the “donor and recipient” prove to be a decent match, it is efficient to transplant an organ. The transplant team puts the donor into some tests in order to determine the compatibility of blood and tissues with those of the recipient. In case they do not match, some medical centers can still transplant the organ, but the recipient must need some unique treatments to prevent rejection of the new organ by the body (Brezina, 2009). Conclusion Organ donation is a major surgery; every surgery type has risks including bleeding, infection, blood clots, and even damage to the nearby tissues and organs. Although a living donor will receive an anesthesia during the surgery, one can develop pain during recovery from surgery and this pain varies depending on the surgery undergone. Visible and lasting scars due to the injury may also be imminent. Moreover, the body requires time to recover fully from the surgery and one might miss work until fully healed. Even though the recipient’s indemnity covers the surgery costs, there will be no cover of any medical problems that will arise due to the transplant in the prospect. References Childress, J., & Liverman, C. (2006). Organ donation: Opportunities for action. New York: National Academies Press. Brezina, C. (2009). Organ Donation: Risks, Rewards, and Research. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group. US Department of Health and Human Services. (2011). U.S. Government Information on Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation. Retrieved from http://www.organdonor.gov/Default.asp Read More