Introduction
Every day many Americans who require organ transplant strive to get the few available organs such as lungs, hearts, kidneys and other vital lifesaving organs, as well as blood. However, ethical and legal issues, and unwillingness of many potential donors to provide consents have slowed down the rate of organ and blood donation in the county. This essay argues for the need to enhance organ and blood donation to save millions of lives of Americans who require organ transplants.
Get more donors through incentives and provide support
It is possible to get more people to donate their organs by addressing legal and ethical concerns of potential donors. More individuals can be encouraged to register as organ donors. It may seem simple to get people to register as organ donors. Improving the rates of deceased donations can increase the number of available lifesaving organs for donation.
These organs are obtained posthumously from individuals who have given their consents for retrieval. In addition, living donors for kidneys, for instance, should also be encouraged to donate their organs to address the shortage. The state or federal government should find ways of providing incentives to potential donors to encourage them to donate their organs to strangers.
That is, potential healthy donors should benefit from their acts of donating their organs to strangers through ethical incentives and not payments. Physicians and patients have noted that the best approach to facilitate organ donation is through encouraging more living organs to take part in the organ and blood donation activities. This approach can help to address the growing shortage.
Incentives from governments to encourage individuals to donate their organs may be in the form of tax credit, support in retirement or other designated forms of assistance people may require. It is imperative to note that potential recipients may wait for nearly five years to get organ transplant from donors. This implies that several people continue to die as they wait for donated organs.
The long wait and the large number of recipients have promoted many experts to support compensation for donors. It is believed that such incentives would encourage many people to donate their organs. One must recognize that trading in human organs is an illegal activity based on the National Organ Transplant Act. While the Act forbids individuals from selling their organs or receiving payments, it does not bar payments associated with the organ donation processes.
Governments can initiate policy changes to increase organ donation, especially from deceased organ donors. Deceased donations should target individuals who die from stroke, accidents and homicide that make people brain dead. While organs and tissues from a single deceased donor can have a significant impact on several recipients, there are no enough deceased donors to meet the growing demands.
Hence, encouraging living donors to participate in organ donation may reduce the long wait. Organ donors get limited support during organ donation processes. However, many experts agree that compensation could be a difficult approach to manage. It is believed that compensations would render the Act useless and slowly turn many potential donors to human organ vendors.
The situation would become complicated because more people would require organs because of chronic diseases that cause organ failure. The altruistic system of organ donation has worked well and, therefore, state and federal governments should encourage it. By addressing ethical and legal concerns, donation processes should address potential adverse effects such as transmission of diseases, costs and complications.
Encouraging open debate on organ donation would ensure that ethical and legal concerns are addressed while the public can scrutinize the process. However, many experts few that offering financial rewards to individuals willing to donate their organs could lead other complications, specifically luring the poor to sell their organs. The objective should be to promote the altruistic system of organ donation.
Effective policies should enhance and facilitate the acts of donating vital human organs as a public good. Hence, the government should invest in processes that facilitate organ acquisition and distribution. In this regard, public health resources should be dedicated to cater for related costs and complications. In addition, public education is necessary to inform the public of the importance and benefits of organ and blood donation.
This strategy would enhance the number of consents obtained and deceased organ donation. It will also facilitate best practices and eliminate ethical concerns of many donors. Organ and blood donations should have core principles and values that define them. Respect, eliminate commodification and wicked incentive and promote equitable systems of organ allocations are vital for donors and recipients.
Conclusion
The altruistic system has worked, but it has a major drawback, which is related to the number of few donated organs to meet the needs of potential recipients. Actions and reforms can address the challenge of supply and demand for vital human organs.
Thus, Americans need more voluntary organ donors, focus on possible potential deceased donors and enhance efficiency of organ procurement. In addition, support for donors should be provided to overcome notable limitations while addressing ethical and legal concerns in attempts to increase donated organs through various means.
Works Cited
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Richards, Bernadette and Wendy A Rogers. “Organ donation after cardiac death: legal and ethical justifications for antemortem interventions.” Medical Journal of Australia 187.3 (2007): 168-170. Print.
Sounding Board. “Ethical Incentives – Not Payment – for Organ Donations.” The New England Journal of Medicine 346.25 (2002): 1-4. Print.
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