Utilitarian Approaches to the Controversial

Utilitarian approaches to the controversial subject of organ donation fall into a few different categories. Firstly, there is the question of organ donation from cadavers. Secondly, we must consider organ donations from living people and whether or not they should be mandatory from a person who can spare an organ (for example a kidney or a piece of the liver) or possibly even not spare the organ.

In such a case, classic utilitarianism might be justified to kill the owner to benefit several others whose lives would be saved with his or her organs. Classic utilitarianism is repugnant to most individuals in a classic Judeo-Christian society, so agent relativity in consequentialist utilitarian philosophy is usually a necessity. The first position is illustrated in the arguments of Dr. Mark Price, associate professor of philosophy of Columbia College. Dr. Price argues from a utilitarian perspective for mandatory harvesting of organs from cadavers. At present, the U.S.

has an opt-in system that requires the consent of the donor, usually as expressed in a will or on the back of a driver's license. Dr. Price is arguing that due to the shortage of organs, failure to donate effectively is the equivalent of murdering someone. Price's arguments are based upon the work of Dr. Michael Tooley, professor emeritus of philosophy of the University of Chicago on the subject. Dr.

Tooley argues in his moral symmetry principle that duties such as organ donation become more important to fulfill as the amount of effort needed to fulfill them decreases. Since organ transplantation after death requires little effort for the donor, it becomes a moral imperative (Warner, 2010). Agent relativity and consequentialism is usually required to deal with the contradictions inherent in dealing with problems this author raised in this essay's introduction with regard to harvesting organs from live individuals.

The case mentioned above would require an argument from classical act utilitarianism that the lives of say five individuals outweigh the needs of the one individual who is sacrificed. Most utilitarians do not seem to be so bold and this has caused the rise of consequentialism and rule utilitarianism that might argue that it is not necessarily true that the overall good was produced. For instance, if people fear going to hospitals, this is not a good thing, an ancillary result of the forced transplants.

Therefore agent relativity such as Dr. Tooley's above becomes necessary. In this case, the philosopher compares the world with the transplant and without the transplant. Since it could be argued that the world might be worse with the transplants (for example, the reason stated above), then a utilitarian consequentialist using agent relativity could justify that their refusal to kill the donor to harvest the organs and letting the five patients die would be just ("Consequentialism," 2006).

Although not addressed in this author's research on the topic, it would seem the above arguments with regard to the use of agent relativity might allow the forcible removal of a kidney or a lobe of the liver, since the possibilities of health complications are small for the donor. To recap, this author found that utilitarian approaches to the controversial subject of organ donation fell into a few different categories. Firstly, we considered the question of organ donation from cadavers.

Secondly, we considered organ donations from living people and whether or not they should be mandatory from a person who can.