ABSTRACT
Medical intervention, including the treatment of organ disease, is influenced by philosophical debates between consequentialism, deontology and rights and also by the so-called four core principles of medical ethics - beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy and justice. In the 19th century the idea of transplanting organs from one living creature to another was a science fiction but early in the 20th century scientists began experimentally taking an organ out of one animal and placing it in another. Although scientists were able to develop corneal transplantation and make it routine by the 1940s it is probably fair to say that most of them were disheartened about the prospects for other forms of organ transplantation. Technical developments in transplantation have continued to move it forward in the 1980s and 1990s. The main form of transplantation with living and dead donors is of kidneys and the number of people waiting for a kidney worldwide stands at around 40,000.
