Organ Donation: First-Come, Best-Served?

Right now, there is an enormous shortage of organs available for transplants. In consequence, as long as a suitable match is found, organs are assigned on a first-come, first-served basis, and there is no way you can be pushed to the top of the list unless you are near death. Something seems wrong about this system. I read that there was a great delay until Erma Bombeck, the great comic writer and definitely a national asset, was given a kidney transplant (and she died almost immediately thereafter). Shouldn't such a woman have been pushed to the top of the list?

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Determining who should live and who should die on the basis of a person's fame or intellectual contribution to society is very tempting but not necessarily moral. Because I believe that human beings are created in God's image, I can't credit the idea that some people are made more in God's image than others. Even though I would prefer to see those who committed violent crimes pushed to the back of the list, I can't help thinking what horrible moral dilemmas would be unleashed if we awarded transplants on the basis of whose life was perceived by some committee to be more worthwhile.

	Organ Donation: Where Your Religion Stands By Gregg Easterbrook Hospital's Organ Program Is Unique One Boston hospital is taking a different approach to donation More Resources on Organ Donation and Allocation

For example, let's compare a 60-year-old philanthropist with a 10-year-old child. A lot of people would argue that the child should receive a transplant first, because she has so much of her life ahead. But another could counter that the 60-year-old has already proved himself to be a fine human being, whereas we have no such assurances about the 10-year-old. Or imagine, for that matter, trying to decide between two 10-year-olds. What criteria of character would you use? It seems to me that as long as we have an inadequate number of organs available for transplant, the current system probably makes sense.

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