New ethical debate on kidney transplants likelyMonday, December 31, 2007 at 07:31 EST
TOKYO — An organ transplant liaison organization said Sunday that 22 percent of cadaveric renal transplantations conducted in Japan used kidneys donated from people on whom life-support treatment was terminated. Of the 1,279 cadaveric renal transplantations during the nine-year period between April 1995 and December 2003, doctors removed the artificial respirator from donors before cardiac arrest in 280 cases, according to the Tokyo-based Japan Organ Transplant Network.
The finding could spark a new ethical debate that the need for transplantation should not encourage earlier termination of life-support treatment, medical and ethics experts said. Such cases should be verified to check on whether hospitals made a rash decision to halt life support treatment on the donors so as to meet transplant demand, they added. Setsuko Konaka, a senior official of the public agency mediating between donors and recipients, said all of the cases, including the 280, were judged by the network's internal assessment committee to have "no problem" concerning their procedures.
http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/424097
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