Organ Transplantation: Benefits, Ethics, and Controversies

Introduction to Organ Transplantation

Organ transplantation is the donating of one's organ to another human being to replace his or her damaged organ (County 2). This procedure has been proven successful in children, young adults, and elderly patients with comorbidities (Grinyó 1). It can be life-saving for patients with terminal organ failures who would otherwise face painful therapies simply to survive (Grinyó 1). Over the last 60 years, the number of organ transplantations has grown considerably, and the introduction of cyclosporine approximately 30 years ago further improved transplantation outcomes (Grinyó 2). It has been established that the heart, kidneys, lungs, uterus, pancreas, intestine, and thymus can all be successfully transplanted (Grinyó 2).

The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), established by the U.S. Congress in 1984, focuses on the policies and legal frameworks governing organ transplantation. The Organ Procurement Organizations (OPO) are the non-profit bodies responsible for acquiring and distributing organs (Staff 22). The successes of organ transplantation, combined with relatively few drawbacks, demonstrate that it is a positive medical procedure that should be widely utilized.

History and Development of Transplantation

Organ transplantation has been a life-saving technique since its earliest days. The procedure's history includes three successful renal transplants performed by Murray and Merrill, the first of which involved identical twins and resulted in a functioning transplant (Starzl 5). The first successful kidney transplant on a dog was performed by Emerich Ullmann (Barker and Markmann 73). After extensive research, a three-step strategy was devised: weakening the recipient's immune system, infusing the donor's bone marrow, and then performing the organ transplant (Starzl 6). Immunosuppressive drugs were subsequently introduced to prevent organ rejection in recipients (Starzl 5). By the 1920s, the Rockefeller Institute had established foundational principles of transplantation immunology, underscoring its critical importance to the field.

Life-Saving Benefits of Organ Donation

Organ transplants today save thousands of lives every year. The Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation (GODT) reported that approximately 100,000 organ transplantations — involving the kidney, liver, heart, lung, and pancreas — occurred in 2010 alone (Grinyó 5). Organ transplantation is enormously significant because a single donor can save up to eight lives (County 3). It also improves recipients' quality of life by extending their life expectancy (Grinyó 5).

Beyond saving lives outright, organ donation ameliorates quality of life in cases such as eye or tissue donation, relieving suffering and restoring abilities that patients had lost (County 2). It fulfills the lives of people who depend on difficult procedures for survival, giving them a renewed outlook. Organ transplantation has been transformative in this century — kidney transplantation for patients with End-Stage Renal Disease, for example, stands as one of its most compelling successes (Grinyó 5).

Conclusion

Organ transplantation has been one of the most successful and miraculous advances in medicine, making the transfer of a human organ from one person to another possible through decades of discovery and experimentation. Progress in the medical field has made survival possible for patients with major organ damage or failure, significantly improving their quality of life. Organ transplantation prolongs and enhances the lives of people with critical organ conditions and is widely regarded as ethically and morally justified — an act of compassion that relieves suffering and gives others what they need to survive.

Nevertheless, arguments against organ transplantation have arisen from documented cases of failure and from the commodification of organs occurring around the world, most severely affecting impoverished populations. Ethical counterarguments have also emerged around the self-harm theory, which holds that the prevalence of drug use and other damaging behaviors in today's society dilutes the moral clarity of organ donation as a purely charitable act, since some recipients may have contributed to their own organ failure. Despite these criticisms, the overall case for organ transplantation as a life-saving and ethically grounded medical practice remains compelling.

Works Cited

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County, B. "5 Benefits of Organ Donations." Florida Today, 8 April 2015.

Ehtuish, E. "Ethical Controversies in Organ Transplantation." Understanding the Complexities of Kidney Transplantation. InTech Open, 2011.

Grinyó, Josep M. "Why Is Organ Transplantation Clinically Important?" Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine 3.6 (2013).

Hughes, N. S. "Human Kidneys: The New Cash Crop." New Internationalist, March 2003. Academic Search Premier.

Hvidt, Niels Christian, et al. "For and Against Organ Donation and Transplantation: Intricate Facilitators and Barriers in Organ Donation Perceived by German Nurses and Doctors." Journal of Transplantation 2016 (2016).

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Resnick, B. "Living Cadavers: How the Poor Are Tricked into Selling Their Organs." The Atlantic, 23 March 2012.

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Staff, Institute of Medicine. Organ Procurement and Transplantation: Assessing Current Policies and the Potential Impact of the DHHS Final Rule. National Academies Press, 1999.