Allocation of Artificial and Transplantable Organs Essay Example

Allocation of Artificial and Transplantable Organs Essay Example Allocation of Artificial and Transplantable Organs Essay Allocation of Artificial and Transplantable Organs Essay Allocation of Artificial and Transplantable Organs Everyday many Americans and others across the world are in need of artificial organs, which is are man-made devices that are implanted into a person to replace their own natural organ and to perform the same functions as that natural organ would. The ability of this to succeed has been one of the biggest achievements in medicine and still continues to save the lives of people everywhere. However, this subject also brings up a lot of controversy. The main problem is that the supply of organs available is less than the great demand of patients needing them, therefore, here has to be way that decides how the organs will be distributed amongst the patients. There are many methods this can be done, but when doing so, one should not take into account a persons social worth and neither should they account for self-inflicted injuries. If it is taken into account, then it is not promoting Justice as fairness. Artificial organs began back in 1943, when a Dutch physician by the name of Willem Kolff invented the hemodialysis machine. This machine forced blood to and from the body for cleansing. Every time this was performed, it was required for the cannulas to be connected to arteries and veins. Eventually, these sites would become exhausted and could not work anymore. This resulted in the invention of a shunt by Dr. Belding Scribner, which is a tube permanently attached to one vein and one artery and allowed for the continuous blood flow. Now with the two inventions put together, the doctors had created an artificial kidney that could save many lives. However, this amazing breakthrough led to issue: the scarcity of these machines. Because there was very few of them available to patients, doctors had to come up with a way to decide which patients got dialysis and which didnt. The best option was The God Committee, created by the Swedish Hospital, Scribner, and Kings County Medical Society to take the burden of this moral decision off physicians. The committee consisted of seven members of the community: a surgeon, a minister, a housewife, a labor leader, a banker, a lawyer, and a state governmental official. They never met the candidates they were discussing, but had two physicians that served as advisors and screened the patients for medical unsuitability. The first criteria that was set by The God Committee required for patients wanting dialysis was that they ad to be residents of the state of Washington and under forty five years old. They also had to afford the expensive treatment. This was still not enough and too many people were applying so they then started considering the candidates personal information like education, employment, family, and achievements. Eventually, the committee in charge of distributing artificial organs was replaced by the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS because of Congress passing the End-Stage Renal Disease Act stating that the federal government is entitled to pay for the dialysis treatment of any American. UNOS is a non-profit organization that established national standards of how the artificial organs are distributed and is still used in todays society. This organization mainly deals with national transplant waltlng llst ana matcnes Oonors wltn reclplents twenty-Tour nours a clay. UNOS was created in 1987, it seemed as if the system of allocating artificial organs had improved significantly, however, there are still many issues that have not been resolved. The main one being how and when applicants get put on the waiting list because UNOS does not deal with patients who are not yet on the list.