ABSTRACT
Overall, there are clearly flaws and deficiencies in the American legislation and certain medical practices relating to the organ allocation. It must be at least debatable whether potential recipients must be judged according to some sort of social hierarchy. Anderson (1995) comments perceptively on these difficult, and it is submitted, practically impossible decisions on how to choose between donors when he writes:
Anderson further argues that that a possible exception might be patients who have been adjudged less worthy by society at large, because of their conduct, such as those convicted of serious criminal offences who he believes ‘should automatically forfeit their ability to receive a transplant’ but that there is room for debate on the nature of the offence that would be serious enough to warrant this forfeiture (only violent crimes? Only recidivists?) and the duration of the ban. He points out that a conviction for committing certain criminal acts will, in any event, remove a potential participant from consideration altogether for an appropriate period of time, but these considerations apart, the basic principle remains the same, that is, ‘when deciding eligibility for transplants, the relative worth of candidates should ordinarily neither be calculated nor considered’ (see Anderson (1995)).
