23 February to 2 March

Organ donation - an act of postmortal solidarity?
Every year thousands die who could be saved, if there were enough organs available. Nobody is duty-bound to save all lives which are endangered. Nevertheless, there is good reason to believe that a welfare state based on the principle of human dignity has a responsibility to establish laws that grant the greatest possible benefit from the organs of brain dead people. The ethical question is whether people, as long as they are alive, have to consent that their organs are taken after death, or whether it is enough that they do not object to their being taken.

We have to pay taxes and contributions to the health care system whether we want to or not. But there are good reasons to be more careful with forced solidarity in the case of organ transplantation. A human corpse is not simply an object and so everybody should have a right to opt out of organ donation. If a human life can be saved, society should try hard to do so. In combination with a good coordination process for the use of donor organs, an opting-out rule can serve this purpose, because it assumes the solidarity of citizens without forcing it upon them.  

Prof. Dr. mult. N. Knoepffler, Ethikzentrum der Universität Jena/Ethical Centre Jena University. 

If you are interested in the ethics of organ donation you might wish to look again at the reflections by Robert Taylor, Jonathan Long and Jim McKenna.