The Ethics of Presumed Consent

“Opt out is not the magic bullet. It will not be the magic answer we have been looking for,” said Dorry L. Segev, an associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and leader of the study published online in the journal Transplantation.

“With opt out, the perception becomes, ‘We will take your organs unless you take the time to fill out a form.’ That’s a dangerous perception to have. We only want to use donated organs from people who intended to donate.”

Links:

**Presumed consent no answer to solving organ shortage in U.S., The JHU Gazette, Johns Hopkins Medicine, December 5, 2011

**Podcast: The Ethics of First Person Consent, Terry Rosell, DMin, PhD and Rob Linderer, Midwest Transplant Network

The Ethics of Donation after Cardiac Death

David Magnus, PhD

September 17, 2010

13 minutes 8 seconds

The debate continues on the ethics of donating organs after cardiac death. How do we make sure patients do not suffer, or that their dying is prolonged? When is someone truly dead, meaning that their organs can be used for transplant?

David Magnus of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics provides some answers and insights in this edition of the Bioethics Channel.

Link to podcast here.