Ethische Erwägungen zur Organtransplantation und zum Hirntodkriterium

Abstract

For the moral evaluation of organ transplantations, it is not only relevant that they are potentially live-saving or significantly life-improving procedures. It is also relevant that they may have an impact on the integrity or even dignity of possible donors and are a potential strain on the donors' relatives. In order to find out how the different impacts of organ transplantation on the parties involved are to be morally weighed against one other, the concepts of dignity and of negative and positive moral rights are clarified. Against the widely held view that the procurement of organs from brain dead donors is morally suspect while living organ donation is the morally superior option, it is argued that there is a prima facie moral duty to postmortem organ donation. On the other hand, since in the procurement of organs from living donors physicians systematically injure and endanger healthy persons, this practice can only be morally justified in well-defined exceptional cases.

Hirntodkriterium und Organspende: aktuelle neurowissenschaftliche Perspektive

“…Nach K. Steigleder zwingt uns die Beobachtung organismischer Funktion beim Hirntoten dazu, deutlicher zu fassen (und nicht neu zu definieren), worin der Tod des Menschen eigentlich besteht: Voraussetzung leibhafter Existenz ist Empfindungsfähigkeit; insofern Empfindungsfähigkeit an ein funktionsfähiges Gehirn gebunden ist, bedeutet der vollständige irreversible Hirnfunktionsausfall das irreversible Ende des leibhaft existierenden Organismus, also seinen Tod [ 68 ].…”