Fisher J
Department of Marketing and Management, University of New England, Armidale NSW, Australia.
Med Health Care Philos. 1999;2(1):31-9. doi: 10.1023/a:1009980400230.
The current voluntary posthumous organ donation policy fails to provide sufficient organs to meet the demand. In these circumstances xenografts have been regarded as an expedient solution. The public perception seems to be that the only impediments to this technology are technical and biological. There are, however, important ethical issues raised by xenotransplantation that need to be considered as a matter of urgency. When the ethical issues raised by using non-human animals to provide replacement organs for human beings are considered in a wider context and the possible alternatives to xenotransplantation are taken into account, a new dimension is added to the debate. In this broader context it is argued that a less ethically problematic solution is to adopt a presumed consent or opt-out organ procurement policy to regulate posthumous organ harvesting from humans. If there are still too few organs available, then the whole question of transplantation must be reassessed.
当前的自愿身后器官捐赠政策未能提供足够的器官以满足需求。在这种情况下，异种移植被视为一种权宜之计。公众的看法似乎是，这项技术的唯一障碍是技术和生物学方面的。然而，异种移植引发了一些重要的伦理问题，需要作为紧急事项加以考虑。当在更广泛的背景下考虑使用非人类动物为人类提供替代器官所引发的伦理问题，并考虑异种移植的可能替代方案时，这场辩论就有了新的层面。在这个更广泛的背景下，有人认为，一个伦理问题较少的解决方案是采用推定同意或退出式器官获取政策来规范从人类身上获取身后器官。如果可用器官仍然太少，那么就必须重新评估整个移植问题。
