ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses some of the ethical issues and choices involved in developing and employing a recipient selection process. Given the very great ethical and political difficulties of selecting recipients under conditions of scarcity, perhaps the most important policy response to the problems of recipient selection may be to increase organ supply so as to reduce scarcity and in turn the necessity of choosing among candidates for transplantation. The size of the pool of potential recipients who could be benefited by transplantation is largely beyond the control of medical practice and health policy. There are more patients who both desire and would likely be benefited by organ transplantation than can receive transplants with the current supply of organs. The chapter considers some ethically controversial selection factors to see whether they may reasonably be taken to contribute to the amount of good done with the scarce resources.
