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Abandoning the Dead Donor Rule.

Anthony P Smith^1,2

¹Philosophy, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA anthony.smith@snow.edu.

Journal of Medical Ethics

|October 3, 2022

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

The Dead Donor Rule may be abandoned for permanently unconscious patients (PUC). Death does not harm consenting organ donors, thus ending the ethical prohibition against doctors causing patient death.

Keywords:

death ethics- medical tissue and organ procurement transplantation

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Area of Science:

Medical Ethics
Philosophy of Medicine
Bioethics

Background:

The Dead Donor Rule is a contentious ethical principle in organ donation.
It aims to protect patients and the public but faces ongoing debate.
Existing arguments for the rule often center on the prohibition of physicians causing patient death.

Purpose of the Study:

To argue for the abandonment of the Dead Donor Rule in specific cases.
To re-evaluate the ethical permissibility of causing death in permanently unconscious patients (PUC).
To provide a harm-based ethical framework for organ donation practices.

Main Methods:

Utilizing Joel Feinberg's philosophical account of harm.
Analyzing the concept of harm in relation to death for permanently unconscious patients.
Examining the ethical implications of patient consent in organ donation.

Main Results:

In most cases, particularly with patient consent, death does not inflict further harm on permanently unconscious patients.
Causing the death of consenting permanently unconscious patients is not morally wrong under this framework.
The strongest argument for the Dead Donor Rule (physicians must not kill) is undermined.

Conclusions:

Abandoning the Dead Donor Rule for permanently unconscious patients is ethically permissible.
This harm-based approach bypasses complex debates on the definition of death.
The ethical focus should be on whether death causes further harm, not solely on the timing of death.