The lottery of life: should organ transplants be used to even the odds?
Life is not always fair and the advantages of health and well-being are not equally distributed. Unfortunately, children can be the innocent victim of their families' misfortune. In the realm of health care, should a child be denied a specific medical treatment because his or her parents are not capable of providing the care necessary to promote a successful outcome of that treatment? How should we as health care professionals make those difficult choices? The following case and the ethical analysis describes a scenario where there was disagreement if a child's family situation should be considered in the decision to list the child for a liver transplant.
Morray
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D026686:Beneficence; D002651:Child Advocacy; D028663:Ethical Theory; D028741:Ethics Committees, Clinical; D004993:Ethics, Nursing; D015276:Health Care Rationing; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D016031:Liver Transplantation; D008297:Male; D018579:Patient Selection; D040841:Resource Allocation; D018570:Risk Assessment