ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates how difficult and how erroneous it would be to take a simple stand on the kinds of questions raised by organ transplantation in its present stage of development, or to make absolutist policy recommendations. The giving and receiving of a gift of enormous value, it aims the most significant meaning of human organ transplantation. The donor who offers a part of his body for transplantation is making an inestimably precious gift. The development of transplantation has created options that did not previously exist for warding off death, saving life, demonstrating an ultimate kind of concern for another person, and expressing transcendent meaning. Whenever live-donor kidney transplantation is being contemplated by a medical team, the close relatives of the candidaterecipient are subject to pressure to offer themselves as donors. Cadaver organ transplantation does not usually involve the same sorts of family-based obligatory demands on the prospective donor as does a live-donor organ exchange.
