As we are now in the month of April, I wanted to write this week’s post on a topic chosen from the list of national observations for which April officially designated. I didn’t think there would be many articles about pecans and straw hats (we’re dropping the ball, philosophers!), so I went with a topic that I covered extensively in my Bioethics class last Fall, organ donation. Since 2003, April has been celebrated across the country as National Donate Life month. Several organizations, such as the Department of Health and Human Services and Donate Life America, are planning events.
Even though Organ Donation is widely endorsed, multiple difficulties remain instituting it. For instance, in my Bioethics class we read articles advocating a more utilitarian approach aimed at saving the most number of lives, and others which suggested that quality of life is just as important to consider. Similar issues related to organ donation are biological compatibility, culture, consent, and experimental procedures. In observance of National Donate Life month, here is some of the most recent research done on organ donation.
- Teck Chuan Voo, “Altruism and Reward: Motivational Compatibility in Deceased Organ Donation,” Bioethics, March 2015.
- Lisa Cassidy, “Thoughts on the Bioethics of Estranged Biological Kin,” Hypatia, February 2013.
- Nicholas Tonti-Filippini, “Religious and Secular Death: A Parting of the Ways,” Bioethics, October 2012.
- Shoaib Rasheed and Aasim Padela, “The Interplay between Religious Leaders and Organ Donation Among Muslims,” Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science, September 2013.
- Rhonda Shaw, “Expanding the conceptual toolkit of organ gifting,” Sociology of Health & Illness, July 2015.
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