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Bad news: a young man gets a terrible lung disease.
Good news: he gets a lung transplant.
Bad news: the lungs he gets belonged to a heavy smoker and he dies a year later, of lung cancer.
The critical question here, which I can't find in the article: did the patient know the donor was a heavy smoker before the transplant, and did he have an informed choice? If his only choice was, a) heavy smoker's lungs, or b) take a chance at dying before we get you a non-smoker's lungs...what a decision to have to make! It seems unethical to force the patient to make that choice.
But if that choice was made for him...well that seems unethical too, if the decision is - yes we will give you a compromised organ.
Is it ethical for doctors to use organs from a donor whose lifestyle makes those organs susceptible to a particular disease, if the patient doesn't know?
This seems a Catch-22. It seems unethical to force the patient to make the decision, and it seems unethical to make it for him.
How does medicine deal with this?
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/10/12/soldier.lung.cancer.transplant/index.html"
Good news: he gets a lung transplant.
Bad news: the lungs he gets belonged to a heavy smoker and he dies a year later, of lung cancer.
The critical question here, which I can't find in the article: did the patient know the donor was a heavy smoker before the transplant, and did he have an informed choice? If his only choice was, a) heavy smoker's lungs, or b) take a chance at dying before we get you a non-smoker's lungs...what a decision to have to make! It seems unethical to force the patient to make that choice.
But if that choice was made for him...well that seems unethical too, if the decision is - yes we will give you a compromised organ.
Is it ethical for doctors to use organs from a donor whose lifestyle makes those organs susceptible to a particular disease, if the patient doesn't know?
This seems a Catch-22. It seems unethical to force the patient to make the decision, and it seems unethical to make it for him.
How does medicine deal with this?
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/10/12/soldier.lung.cancer.transplant/index.html"
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