Allocation of Artificial and Transplantable Organs
Allocation of Artificial and Transplantable Organs Everyday many Americans and others across the world are in need of artificial organs, which is are man-made devices that are implanted into a person to replace their own natural organ and to perform the same functions as that natural organ would. The ability of this to succeed has been one of the biggest achievements in medicine and still continues to save the lives of people everywhere. However, this subject also brings up a lot of controversy. The main problem is that the supply of organs available is less than the great demand of patients needing them, therefore, there has to be way that decides how the organs will be distributed amongst the patients. There are many methods this can be done, but when doing so, one should not take into account a person’s “social worth” and neither should they account for self-inflicted injuries. If it is taken into account, then it is not promoting justice as fairness. Artificial organs began back in 1943, when a Dutch physician by the name of Willem Kolff invented the hemodialysis machine. This machine forced blood to and from the body for cleansing. Every time this was performed, it was required for the cannulas to be connected to arteries and veins. Eventually, these sites would become exhausted and could not work anymore. This resulted in the invention of a shunt by Dr. Belding Scribner, which is a tube permanently attached to one vein and one artery and allowed for the continuous blood flow. Now with the two inventions put together, the doctors had created an artificial kidney that could save many lives. However, this amazing breakthrough led to issue: the scarcity of these machines. Because there was very few of them available to patients, doctors had to come up with a way to decide which patients got dialysis and which didn’t. The best option was “The God Committee”, created by the Swedish Hospital, Scribner, and King’s County Medical Society to