Organ transplantation from living donors, between bioethics and the law

The lack of cadaver donors and the high requirements for organs cannot be met by present sources, leading to the need for xenoorgans or stem cell-derived tissues/organs. Actually, despite experimental suggestions, scientific and ethical doubts have been raised by both the scientific community and international organizations (World Health Organization, 1998; European Council of Parliamentary Assembly, 1999). Thus, to balance the shortage of organs, laws allowing living organ donations have been issued in several countries, including Italy, where there is an increasingly favorable attention to organ transplantation from living donors. Because of the prohibition of body commercialization issued by the Oviedo Convention (1997), the bioethics and legal debate as well as issued laws concern 2 major closely related aspects: the health-defense of the donor who accepts a decreased well-being and the counterbalanced possibility of an economic advantage/indemnity.