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Organ Transplantation and the Art of the Possible

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

William L. Kissick
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Extract

Ethicists, lawyers, economists, and clinicians have been invited to comment on the Report of the Massachusetts ‘Task Force on Organ Transplantation In this issue of Law, Medicine & Health Care. One can assume that the issues of access, equity, social justice, efficiency, and choice will be addressed. Accordingly, I shall return to the perspective of my earlier career as a federal bureaucrat to offer an overall appraisal and to comment on the political dimensions of resource allocation in dramatic, life-threatening diseases.

Nearly two decades ago, I served as the Director of Program Planning and Evaluation for the Surgeon General, at the time that cost-benefit analysis was introduced into the Great Society. The treatment of chronic kidney disease circa 1966 was then a problem akin to those of heart, heart-lung, and liver transplantation in 1984 or, perhaps, the next decade's problem of the artificial heart.

Type
Article
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , February 1985 , pp. 34 - 35
Copyright
© 1985 American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics

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References

Bureau of the Budget, Report of the Committee on Chronic Kidney Disease (U.S. Gov't Printing Office, Washington, D.C.) (1967) at 1 (emphasis added) [hereinafter referred to as Chronic Kidney Disease].Google Scholar
Public Health Service, Kidney Disease Program Analysis: A Report to the Surgeon General (U.S. Gov't Printing Office, Washington, D.C.) (1967) at 1.Google Scholar
Chronic Kidney Disease, supra note 1, at 6.Google Scholar
Social Security Amendments of 1972, 42 U.S.C. §426(e)(3)(1974).Google Scholar
Figures from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 1984.Google Scholar