Organ Transplantation - Essay Example

"Organ Transplantation" is an outstanding example of a paper on transplantation and donation. There used to be a time in our civilized society when the failure of a person's organ meant a death sentence. He would die from complications of the illness because it was not possible to replace the damaged organ with a functional one. However, medical science overcame those limitations and mastered the art of organ transplantation. A surgical procedure that has saved thousands of lives at the moment. However, there are a number of ethical considerations to think about before an organ transplant can be done. One of which is whether a potential donor who is see-sawing between life and death should be euthanized in order to harvest his organs for use in another patient suffering from organ failure. Would such a move be considered ethical if the procedure is a success? That is the question that is asked of the ethicists in the malpractice case set before Dr. Hootan C. Roozrokh.

          We have to remember that among all of the people practicing in the medical field, surgical doctors have the man given the power to play God with the lives of their patients. They have the power to arbitrarily give or take a life. Such a power can be all-consuming for organ transplant surgeons such as Dr. Roozrokh who definitely overstepped the boundaries of patient-doctor privilege when he played god and decided to take the life of Ruben Navarro in a misguided attempt to save the life of another patient who could benefit from the still viable organs that Mr. Navarro had. The hitch was that Mr. Navarro had to die within a certain time frame.

          Due to the misrepresentations on the part of Dr. Roozrokh, he got the mother of the patient to agree to what he wanted. Totally disregarding his patient's right to die with dignity and respect. More importantly, there was no clear indication that Mr. Navarro was set to die any time soon. “Near-death” does not equate to dead. As a physician, Dr. Roozrock lost sight of the fact that the human body is a mystery that cannot be explained. Anybody near-death could still bounce back to life depending upon certain underlying situations. Therefore, his move to hasten the death of Mr. Navarro was not only unwarranted but criminal in intent.

          Granted that the transplant that was done for Patient X was a failure, that still does not excuse the actions of Dr. Roozrokh. Most especially since he obviously broke protocol in this instance by not allowing the patient to have natural death and he harvested the organs for use in his patient without giving other organ donation patients a chance to claim an organ for themselves. He wasted the organs that he selfishly took from Mr. Navarro because the transplant he performed failed to save a life when the organs could have saved other lives had it been given a chance to be transplanted into others.