NCM 108 Healthcare Ethics (Bioethics)

REQUIREMENT 1
PRELIMINARY

Name: Date:
Year/Section:
Clinical Instructor:

Case Analysis

ORGAN TRANSPLANT

Imagine that you're a surgeon. Five hospital patients are in desperate need of
multiple organ transplants to thrive. One requires a heart, one a lung, one a liver
and the other two a kidney each. It happens that all five have the same rare form of
blood so identifying the appropriate donor is challenging. A foreign tourist came to
the hospital at this time to do a routine physical examination. He happens to have
the same rare type of blood as theirs. Through your experience, as long as you are
utilizing some simple medicine to end the traveler's life painlessly and without
others' warning, then his organs will save the five people waiting for organ
transplants.
Question for discussion:

As a surgeon, what would you do? Would you kill one person to save five people?
Defend your answer by identifying the appropriate ethical theory that you will utilize and
applying its concepts and principles. (minimum of 200 words).

My answer is no, for me, it is not always OK to kill one person in order to save
five others, but that is the situation here. It is not morally acceptable to kill one person in
order to save five others in the case of a transplant. In this case, autonomy would be at
odds with non-maleficence; yes, we must apply fidelity, which is our promise to care for
our patients; however, if I were the surgeon, I would consider the problem that I may do
or cause for the tourist, who is a healthy person, and I would apply the principles of
justice, which is to be fair to all; it is equality of all. We as a professional have the right
of desire to do good of our patient. As i listen to Doc. Soliman discussion he said that
the prime principle in medical ethics is first doing no harm which is the non -
maleficence. If the tourist volunteers to terminate her life in order to save five others,
that is fine with me considering that it's her decision; however, if I try to ask the tourist to
donate her organs in order to save five people, that would be unethical for me to do that
thing. To sum up it is significant for me as a surgeon to also consider the risk that I may
put to my innocent healthy patient. Remember there is a difference between killing and
letting die. :)

/Prof. M.C.Soliman