Trial-and-error ethics: experimenting with non-heartbeating cadaver organ donation.

TL;DRAbstract

It seems commendable that Michael A. DeVita and James V. Snyder, and the physicians, nurses, and Ethics Committee of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) on whose behalf they write, continually and publicly reflect on the policy they have enacted to obtain organs from non-heartbeating cadaver donors, and that they are willing to change their procedures in the light of their experiences with their protocol for this type of transplant, and the criticisms of it they have invited. It is also disquieting because, in effect, the Medical Center is engaged in trial-and-error experimentation with some features of the protocol that, from the outset, should not have been a part of it, and with certain revisions of the protocol that are as questionable as what has been modified. Is it really as virtuous as it appears, then, for UPMC health professionals and Ethics Committee members to constantly reevaluate and alter their policy for non-heartbeating organ donation, and for their spok

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