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Aaron Spital

Publications and source records attributed to Aaron Spital.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2005

Should people who commit themselves to organ donation be granted preferred status to receive organ transplants?

Granting preferred status for transplantation to people who commit themselves to posthumous organ donation is an intriguing proposal designed to increase the pool of cadaveric organ donors. Under one version of this plan, all competent adults who had previously consented to having their organs removed and transplanted upon their deaths would be given priority to receive organs, should they ever need them, over potential recipients of equal need who had not agreed to donate. To see if this plan would be acceptable to the public, I contracted Harris Interactive to conduct a national telephone survey about this issue. One thousand fourteen adults living in the United States were queried. Fifty-three percent of the respondents thought that people who agree to donate their organs after death should be granted priority to receive cadaveric organ transplants over those who do not agree to donate. Only 30% of the respondents would definitely oppose this plan. These data suggest that a pilot study of preferred status should be considered.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

More on parental living liver donation for children with fulminant hepatic failure: addressing concerns about competing interests, coercion, consent and balancing acts.

Parental living liver donation for children with fulminant hepatic failure raises complex ethical issues. According to a recent editorial in this journal, these include contradictory interests, the possibility of coercion and compromised consent and the need to balance the risks to the donor against the potential benefits for the recipient. Here I argue that in this setting, interests are often aligned rather than conflicted, that coercion of parental donors is rare, that consent may sometimes be valid even when it is not fully informed and that the correct balance to consider is the relative weights of risks and benefits for the donor. I conclude that living liver donation by parents of children with fulminant hepatic failure is consistent with societal norms of parental behavior, ethically acceptable and should be permitted regardless of the efficiency of the deceased donor organ recovery program.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Should people who donate a kidney to a stranger be permitted to choose their recipients? Views of the United States public.

BACKGROUND: Several transplant centers have begun to accept kidneys donated by altruistic living strangers. Many of these centers insist that such donations be nondirected, meaning that the donors may not choose their recipients. On the other hand, some authors have argued that anonymous donors should be allowed to select their recipients. This study was designed to explore public attitudes toward this issue. METHODS: Two telephone surveys of US adults, each including more than 1000 participants, were conducted. The first asked about the general acceptability of allowing altruistic strangers to direct donations, the willingness to donate a kidney to a stranger, and the impact of permitting directed donation on willingness to give. The second survey asked about the acceptability of directed donation to members of specific groups. RESULTS: About one quarter of the respondents said they would donate a kidney to a stranger for free, and the vast majority of them would donate even if they could not choose their recipients. Two thirds would not allow anonymous kidney donors to direct their gifts to a member of a specific racial or religious group, but three quarters would support kidney donations directed to children. CONCLUSIONS: These data support the current policy of several transplant centers that people who wish to donate a kidney to a stranger are not permitted to choose their recipients on the basis of membership in a racial or religious group. On the other hand, theoretical considerations and the results of this study suggest that people who wish to donate a kidney only to an unknown child should be permitted to do so.

Adult↗