Putting Patients First in Organ Allocation: An Ethical Analysis of the U.S. Debate

Organ allocation policy involves a mixture of ethical, scientific, medical, legal, and political factors, among others. It is thus hard, and perhaps even impossible, to identify and fully separate ethical considerations from all these other factors. Yet I will focus primarily on the ethical considerations embedded in the current debate in the United States about organ allocation policy. I will argue that it is important to put patients first —in the language of the title of one of the major public hearings—but even then significant ethical questions will remain about exactly how to put patients first.