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Organ Transplants and the Principle of Fairness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

Extract

The Report of the Massachusetts Task Force on Organ Transplantation can be described as an incunabulum. This strange word, properly referring to a book produced in the first decades of printing with movable type, literally means “in the cradle.” The Task Force document appears in the infancy of a discussion that is certain to grow: the public policy debate over the allocation of scarce resources. The debate was born several years ago, but until now has either been argued in general terms or by way of administrative devices. The Task Force addresses a quite particular issue: how to or whether to make available to the citizens of the Commonwealth and their neighbors the medical technology of organ transplantation. It approaches the problem with a vivid awareness of the expense of this technology as well as the constraints on health care resources and financing.

Type
Article
Copyright
© 1985 American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics

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References

President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, Securing Access to Health Care (U.S. Gov't Printing Office, Washington, D.C.) (Vol. 1 1983).Google Scholar
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Engelhardt, H.T., Shattuck Lecture—Allocating Scarce Medical Resources and the Availability of Organ Transplantation: Some Moral Presuppositions, New England Journal of Medicine 311(1); 6671 (July 5, 1984).Google ScholarPubMed