Cash incentives and the payment of funeral expenses are two ideas being put forward to encourage people to donate human organs and tissue. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics is asking the public if it is ethical to use financial incentives to increase donations of organs, eggs and sperm. Paying for most types of organs and tissue is illegal in the UK. The public consultation will last 12 weeks and the council's findings will be published in autumn 2011.
We provide our bodies or parts of our bodies for medical research or for the treatment of others in a number of ways and for a variety of reasons. However, there is a shortage of bodily material for many of these purposes in the UK. What should be done about it? The Council has set up a Working Party, chaired by Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern, to explore the ethical issues raised by the provision of bodily material for medical treatment and research. Questions to be considered include: * what motivates people to provide bodily material and what inducements or incentives are appropriate? * what constitutes valid consent? * what future ownership or control people should have over donated materials? * are there ethical limits on how we try to meet demand?
Ask a couple struggling to conceive what they would want most in life and "a child" is the obvious answer. They want something money can't buy, even with all the money in the world. For a couple needing egg or sperm donation this reality might change. Money could buy at least the chance of a child if donors were to be paid, if that's one of the outcomes of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) donation review. Various issues are being reviewed in the HFEA public consultation, but payment of egg and sperm donors is high on the agenda.
ROMA - I punti salienti della legge sul testamento biologico approvata oggi alla Camera, che per il varo definitivo dovrà tornare al Senato, sono almeno due: le dichiarazioni anticipate di trattamento non sono vincolanti per i medici ed escludono la possibilità di sospendere nutrizione e idratazione, salvo in casi terminali. Inoltre, sono applicabili solo se il paziente ha un'accertata assenza di attività cerebrale.
There is a considerable body of literature about the death penalty across a variety of disciplines. However, a newer body of literature has emerged examining the phenomenon of elected executions, also known as death row volunteering. To date, 138 (nearly 11%) of the 1300 death row executions have come from volunteers. This issue has been particularly controversial due to a number of legal and ethical considerations that have been raised by the scholarly, legal, and public communities. Such issues include a capital defendant’s competency to volunteer; ethical and moral dilemmas for capital defense attorneys, the states, and medical and mental health professionals; whether death row volunteering equates to ‘state-assisted suicide’; and finally, how these considerations impact the public’s support for capital punishment. This paper reviews the existing literature pertaining to death row volunteering through the lenses of these various considerations. Recommendations for future research in this area are also offered.
Some form of assisted dying (voluntary euthanasia and/or assisted suicide) is lawful in the Netherlands, Belgium, Oregon, and Switzerland. In order to be lawful in these jurisdictions, a valid request must precede the provision of assistance to die. Non-adherence to the criteria for valid requests for assisted dying may be a trigger for civil and/or criminal liability, as well as disciplinary sanctions where the assistor is a medical professional. In this article, we review the criteria and evidence in respect of requests for assisted dying in the Netherlands, Belgium, Oregon, and Switzerland, with the aim of establishing whether individuals who receive assisted dying do so on the basis of valid requests. We conclude that the evidence suggests that individuals who receive assisted dying in the four jurisdictions examined do so on the basis of valid requests and third parties who assist death do not act unlawfully. However, further research on the elements that may undermine ...