WHO Guiding Principles on Human Cell, Tissue and Organ Transplantation1

FigurePREAMBLE As the Director-General's report to the Executive Board at its Seventy-ninth session pointed out, human organ transplantation began with a series of experimental studies at the beginning of the twentieth century. The report drew attention to some of the major clinical and scientific advances in the field since Alexis Carrel was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1912 for his pioneering work. Surgical transplantation of human organs from deceased, as well as living, donors to sick and dying patients began after the Second World War. Over the past 50 years, the transplantation of human organs, tissues and cells has become a worldwide practice which has extended, and greatly enhanced the quality of, hundreds of thousands of lives. Continuous improvements in medical technology, particularly in relation to organ and tissue rejection, have led to an increase in the demand for organs and tissues, which has always exceeded supply despite substantial expansion in deceased organ donation as well as greater reliance on donation from living persons in recent years. The shortage of available organs has not only prompted many countries to develop procedures and systems to increase supply but has also stimulated commercial traffic in human organs, particularly from living donors who are unrelated to recipients. The evidence of such commerce, along with the related traffic in human beings, has become clearer in recent decades. Moreover, the growing ease of international communication and travel has led many patients to travel abroad to medical centres that advertise their ability to perform transplants and to supply donor organs for a single, inclusive charge. Resolutions WHA40.13 and WHA42.5 first expressed the Health Assembly's concern over commercial trade in organs and the need for global standards for transplantation. Based on a process of consultation undertaken by the Secretariat, the Health Assembly then endorsed the WHO Guiding Principles on Human Organ Transplantation in resolution WHA44.25. Over the past 17 years the Guiding Principles have greatly influenced professional codes and practices as well as legislation around the world. In the light of changes in practices and attitudes regarding organ and tissue transplantation, the Fifty-seventh World Health Assembly in resolution WHA57.18 requested the Director-General, inter alia, “to continue examining and collecting global data on the practices, safety, quality, efficacy and epidemiology of allogeneic transplantation and on ethical issues, including living donation, in order to update the Guiding Principles on Human Organ Transplantation”. The following Guiding Principles are intended to provide an orderly, ethical and acceptable framework for the acquisition and transplantation of human cells, tissues and organs for therapeutic purposes. Each jurisdiction will determine the means of implementing the Guiding Principles. They preserve the essential points of the 1991 version while incorporating new provisions in response to current trends in transplantation, particularly organ transplants from living donors and the increasing use of human cells and tissues. The Guiding Principles do not apply to transplantation of gametes, ovarian or testicular tissue, or embryos for reproductive purposes, or to blood or blood constituents collected for transfusion purposes. Cells, tissues and organs may be removed from deceased and living persons for the purpose of transplantation, only in accordance with the following Guiding Principles. GUIDING PRINCIPLE 1 Cells, tissues and organs may be removed from the bodies of deceased persons for the purpose of transplantation if: any consent required by law is obtained, and there is no reason to believe that the deceased person objected to such removal. Commentary on Guiding Principle 1 Consent is the ethical cornerstone of all medical interventions. National authorities are responsible for defining the process of obtaining and recording consent for cell, tissue and organ donation in the light of international ethical standards, the manner in which organ procurement is organized in their country, and the practical role of consent as a safeguard against abuses and safety breaches. Whether consent to procure organs and tissues from deceased persons is “explicit” or “presumed” depends upon each country's social, medical and cultural traditions, including the manner in which families are involved in decision-making about health care generally. Under both systems any valid indication of deceased persons' opposition to posthumous removal of their cells, tissues or organs will prevent such removal. Under a regime of explicit consent – sometimes referred to as “opting in” – cells, tissues or organs may be removed from a deceased person if the person had expressly consented to such removal during his or her lifetime; depending upon domestic law, such consent may be made orally or recorded on a donor card, driver's license or identity card or in the medical record or a donor registry. When the deceased has neither consented nor clearly expressed opposition to organ removal, permission should be obtained from a legally specified surrogate, usually a family member. The alternative, presumed consent system – termed “opting (or contracting) out” – permits material to be removed from the body of a deceased person for transplantation and, in some countries, for anatomical study or research, unless the person had expressed his or her opposition before death by filing an objection with an identified office, or an informed party reports that the deceased definitely voiced an objection to donation. Given the ethical importance of consent, such a system should ensure that people are fully informed about the policy and are provided with an easy means to opt out. Although expressed consent is not required in an opting-out system before removal of the cells, tissues or organs of a deceased person who had not objected while still alive, procurement programmes may be reluctant to proceed if the relatives personally oppose the donation; likewise, in opting-in systems, programmes typically seek permission from the family even when the deceased gave pre-mortem consent. Programmes are more able to rely on the deceased's explicit or presumed consent, without seeking further permission from family members, when the public's understanding and acceptance of the process of donating cells, tissues and organs is deep-seated and unambiguous. Even when permission is not sought from relatives, donor programmes need to review the deceased's medical and behavioural history with family members who knew him or her well, since accurate information about donors helps to increase the safety of transplantation. For tissue donation, which entails slightly less challenging time constraints, it is recommended always to seek the approval of the next of kin. An important point to be addressed is the manner in which the appearance of the deceased's body will be restored after the tissues are removed. GUIDING PRINCIPLE 2 Physicians determining that a potential donor has died should not be directly involved in cell, tissue or organ removal from the donor or subsequent transplantation procedures; nor should they be responsible for the care of any intended recipient of such cells, tissues and organs. Commentary on Guiding Principle 2 This Principle is designed to avoid the conflict of interest that would arise were the physician or physicians determining the death of a potential donor to be responsible in addition for the care of other patients whose welfare depended on cells, tissues or organs transplanted from that donor. National authorities will set out the legal standards for determining that death has occurred and specify how the criteria and process for determining death will be formulated and applied. GUIDING PRINCIPLE 3 Donation from deceased persons should be developed to its maximum therapeutic potential, but adult living persons may donate organs as permitted by domestic regulations. In general living donors should be genetically, legally or emotionally related to their recipients. Live donations are acceptable when the donor's informed and voluntary consent is obtained, when professional care of donors is ensured and follow-up is well organized, and when selection criteria for donors are scrupulously applied and monitored. Live donors should be informed of the probable risks, benefits and consequences of donation in a complete and understandable fashion; they should be legally competent and capable of weighing the information; and they should be acting willingly, free of any undue influence or coercion. Commentary on Guiding Principle 3 The Principle emphasizes the importance both of taking the legal and logistical steps needed to develop deceased donor programmes where these do not exist and of making existing programmes as effective and efficient as possible. While favouring the maximal development of transplant programmes that avoid the inherent risks to live donors, the Principle also sets forth basic conditions for live donation. A genetic relationship between donor and recipient may be therapeutically advantageous and can provide reassurance that the donor is motivated by genuine concern for the recipient, as can a legal relationship (such as that between spouses). Many altruistic donations also originate from emotionally related donors, though the strength of a claimed connection may be difficult to evaluate. Donations by unrelated donors have been a source of concern, though some such cases are unexceptionable, such as in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (where a wide donor pool is therapeutically advisable) or when an exchange of kidneys is made because the donors are not immunologically well matched with the recipients to whom they are related. With live donation, particularly by unrelated donors, psychosocial evaluation is needed to guard against coercion of the donor or the commercialism banned by Principle 5. The national health authority should ensure that the evaluation is carried out by an appropriately qualified, independent party. By assessing the donor's motivation and the donor's and recipient's expectations regarding outcomes, such evaluations may help identify – and avert – donations that are forced or are actually paid transactions. The Principle underscores the necessity of genuine and well-informed choice, which requires full, objective, and locally relevant information and excludes vulnerable persons who are incapable of fulfilling the requirements for voluntary and knowledgeable consent. Voluntary consent also implies that adequate provisions exist for withdrawal of consent up until medical interventions on the recipient have reached the point where the recipient would be in acute danger if the transplant did not proceed. This should be communicated at the time of consent. Finally, this Principle stresses the importance of protecting the health of living donors during the process of selection, donation, and necessary aftercare to ensure that the potential untoward consequences of the donation are unlikely to disadvantage the remainder of the donor's life. Care for the donor should match care for the recipient, and health authorities have the same responsibility for the welfare of both. GUIDING PRINCIPLE 4 No cells, tissues or organs should be removed from the body of a living minor for the purpose of transplantation other than narrow exceptions allowed under national law. Specific measures should be in place to protect the minor and, wherever possible the minor's assent should be obtained before donation. What is applicable to minors also applies to any legally incompetent person. Commentary on Guiding Principle 4 This Principle states a general prohibition on the removal of cells, tissues or organs from legal minors for transplantation. The major exceptions that may be authorized are familial donation of regenerative cells (when a therapeutically comparable adult donor is not available) and kidney transplants between identical twins (where avoiding immunosuppression represents a benefit to the recipient adequate to justify the exception, in the absence of a genetic disorder that could adversely affect the donor in the future). While the permission of the parent(s) or the legal guardian for organ removal is usually sufficient, they may have a conflict of interest if they are responsible for the welfare of the intended recipient. In such cases, review and approval by an independent body, such as a court or other competent authority, should be required. In any event, a minor's objection to making a donation should prevail over the permission provided by any other party. The professional counselling provided to potential living donors in order to assess, and when needed, address any pressure in the decision to donate, is especially important for minor donors. GUIDING PRINCIPLE 5 Cells, tissues and organs should only be donated freely, without any monetary payment or other reward of monetary value. Purchasing, or offering to purchase, cells, tissues or organs for transplantation, or their sale by living persons or by the next of kin for deceased persons, should be banned. The prohibition on sale or purchase of cells, tissues and organs does not preclude reimbursing reasonable and verifiable expenses incurred by the donor, including loss of income, or paying the costs of recovering, processing, preserving and supplying human cells, tissues or organs for transplantation. Commentary on Guiding Principle 5 Payment for cells, tissues and organs is likely to take unfair advantage of the poorest and most vulnerable groups, undermines altruistic donation, and leads to profiteering and human trafficking. Such payment conveys the idea that some persons lack dignity, that they are mere objects to be used by others. Besides preventing trafficking in human materials, this Principle aims to affirm the special merit of donating human materials to save and enhance life. However, it allows for circumstances where it is customary to provide donors with tokens of gratitude that cannot be assigned a value in monetary terms. National law should ensure that any gifts or rewards are not, in fact, disguised forms of payment for donated cells, tissues or organs. Incentives in the form of “rewards” with monetary value that can be transferred to third parties are not different from monetary payments. While the worst abuses involve living organ donors, dangers also arise when payments for cells, tissues and organs are made to next of kin of deceased persons, to vendors or brokers, or to institutions (such as mortuaries) having charge of dead bodies. Financial returns to such parties should be forbidden. This Principle permits compensation for the costs of making donations (including medical expenses and lost earnings for live donors), lest they operate as a disincentive to donation. The need to cover legitimate costs of procurement and of ensuring the safety, quality and efficacy of human cell and tissue products and organs for transplantation is also accepted as long as the human body and its parts as such are not a source of financial gain. Incentives that encompass essential items which donors would otherwise be unable to afford, such as medical care or health insurance coverage, raise concerns. Access to the highest attainable standard of health is a fundamental right, not something to be purchased in exchange for body parts. However, free periodic medical assessments related to the donation and insurance for death or complications that arise from the donation may legitimately be provided to living donors. Health authorities should promote donation motivated by the need of the recipient and the benefit for the community. Any measures to encourage donation should respect the dignity of the donor and foster societal recognition of the altruistic nature of cell, tissue and organ donation. In any event, all practices to encourage the procurement of cells, tissues and organs for transplantation should be defined explicitly by health authorities in a transparent fashion. National legal frameworks should address each country's particular circumstances because the risks to donors and recipients vary. Each jurisdiction will determine the details and method of the prohibitions it will use, including sanctions which may encompass joint action with other countries in the region. The ban on paying for cells, tissues and organs should apply to all individuals, including transplant recipients who attempt to circumvent domestic regulations by travelling to locales where prohibitions on commercialization are not enforced. GUIDING PRINCIPLE 6 Promotion of altruistic donation of human cells, tissues or organs by means of advertisement or public appeal may be undertaken in accordance with domestic regulation. Advertising the need for or availability of cells, tissues or organs, with a view to offering or seeking payment to individuals for their cells, tissues or organs, or, to the next of kin, where the individual is deceased, should be prohibited. Brokering that involves payment to such individuals or to third parties should also be prohibited. Commentary on Guiding Principle 6 This Principle does not affect general advertisements or public appeals to encourage altruistic donation of human cells, tissues or organs, provided that they do not legally systems of organ it aims to commercial which offering to individuals, the next of kin of deceased persons, or other parties in (such as for cells, tissues or it and other as well as GUIDING PRINCIPLE Physicians and other health should not in transplantation and health and other should not cover such if the cells, tissues or organs have been obtained or coercion of, or payment the donor or the next of kin of a deceased donor. Commentary on Guiding Principle Health care should only proceed with the removal, or of cells, tissues or organs when donations are and the of live donors, a psychosocial evaluation of the donor is usually as in Guiding Principle to ensure that the person to the donation has not been or professional and should be by the relevant professional and or Physicians and health care should also not patients to transplant in their or other countries that use of cells, tissues or organs obtained payments to donors, their families or other vendors or nor may they seek or payment for care may be provided to patients who have transplantation at such but physicians who to provide such care should not professional sanctions for such provided that they such patients Health and other should to ethical standards by to for transplants that the Guiding Principles. GUIDING PRINCIPLE health care and involved in cell, tissue or organ procurement and transplantation procedures should be from any payment that the for the Commentary on Guiding Principle This Guiding Principles 5 and by profiteering in cell, tissue and organ and Health authorities should the for transplantation to ensure that they are not disguised for the cells, tissues or organs persons and involved should be for all payments for transplantation A medical or other health care a is should seek the of an or authority before or the for may be used as a GUIDING PRINCIPLE The of organs, cells and tissues should be by clinical criteria and ethical not financial or other defined by appropriately should be and Commentary on Guiding Principle donation do not clinical criteria should be defined at national or by a that in the relevant medical and public Such is important to ensure that not only medical but also and general ethical The criteria for cells, tissues and organs should with human and, in should not be on a recipient's or This implies that the of transplantation and including where should be to all patients that no recipient should be for financial The of is not to the process but is to all of transplantation is in the on Guiding Principle GUIDING PRINCIPLE and procedures are essential for donors and recipients The of cell, tissue and organ donation and transplantation should be for the living donor as well as the recipient in order to benefit and The of safety, efficacy and quality of human cells, tissues and organs for transplantation, as health products of an be and on an This requires of quality systems including and with and both and for human Commentary on Guiding Principle the of cell, tissue and organ transplantation entails a process that clinical interventions and procedures from donor selection Under the of national health transplant programmes should both donors and recipients to ensure that they including information regarding the transplantation responsible for their of information regarding the risks and benefits is essential to the consent process and for the of donors as well as recipients. The benefits to both the risks with the donation and transplantation. should not be permitted to donate in Donation and transplant programmes are to in national international transplant from accepted that could the to recipients or donors, as well as any untoward consequences of donation or transplantation, should be to and by responsible health Transplantation of human material which does not involve may not though should be ensured for the of the donor and the recipient. means of to identify tissues and cells used in transplantation are essential for GUIDING PRINCIPLE The and of donation and transplantation as well as their clinical be transparent and to while ensuring that the and of donors and recipients are always Commentary on Guiding Principle can be as public to data on in particular transplant and for both recipients and living donors, as well as data on and Such is not with from public information that could identify individual donors or recipients while still the necessity of in Principle The of the system should be not only to the availability of data for study and but also to identify risks – and their – in order to to donors or recipients.