Scientist Doris Taylor explains how she and her team are creating bioengineered human hearts in their lab with the goal of one day eliminating the need for heart transplants.
A scholar who has studied imprisonment explains why the promise of sentence reductions in return for organ donation raises ethical issues about whether inmates can ever consent freely.
Contrary to what we may think, changing people’s default status from non-donor to donor cannot significantly increase organ donation rates — as long as the family is involved in the decision.
China’s industrial-scale organ trafficking practice has been executing prisoners of conscience and using their organs for transplantation for decades. This is known as forced organ harvesting.
One tissue donation can save or improve the lives of more than 65 people. So it’s important to unpack and address the reasons South Africans are reluctant to register as tissue and organ donors.
Printing organs could reduce the need for human donor organs. And 3D printed organs using a patient’s own cells would increase successful organ transplants by reducing the risk of rejection.
Deemed consent organ donation means that everyone is assumed to be an organ donor unless they opt out, but assuming consent raises some ethical issues.
Thousands of Canadians are on waiting lists for life-saving organ transplants. An opt-out organ donor system, like the one Nova Scotia is implementing, could reduce avoidable deaths and suffering.
Organs from gay men or injecting drug users, often rejected for transplants, could safely be used, so long as donors test negative for infections such as HIV, and hepatitis B and C.
The idea of human-animal hybrids can raise a lot of questions and it’s easy to feel they are “unnatural” because they violate the boundaries between species.
As the rate of obesity in the US rises, transplant centers are debating whether to accept organ donations from the obese. A new study suggests that oversized hearts are safe to use.
Visiting Professor in Biomedical Ethics, Murdoch Children's Research Institute; Distinguished Visiting Professor in Law, University of Melbourne; Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics, University of Oxford
Professor of Bioethics & Medicine, Sydney Health Ethics, Haematologist/BMT Physician, Royal North Shore Hospital and Director, Praxis Australia, University of Sydney