Medical Ethics Advisor – January 1, 2010

January 1, 2010

• U.S. law is clear, but ethical issues abound in organ transplantation centers

  While it is illegal for an individual to sell his or her organs to transplant recipients in the United States and in most other countries, experts indicate the selling of organs is widespread in certain developing countries.

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• Organ sellers suffer in many developing countries

  Monir Moniruzzaman has seen the kind of poverty that would drive a desperate individual to sell his or her organ.

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• Financial incentives considered for the deceased

  To many who observe the organ transplant arena, it's both a simple and yet complex reckoning of supply and demand.

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• EOL group "alarmed" at revised Catholic directive

  Compassion & Choices, an end-of-life rights group, says that it is "alarmed" by a newly revised Ethical and Religious Directive approved in November by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

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• Why the legal aspects of medical ethics matter

  As Medical Ethics Advisor reported in December, one of the sessions held at the annual conference in Washington, DC, of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities in October was on the top developments in bioethics in 2009.

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• News Briefs

  The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced in early December 2009 its final decision to cover Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection screening for Medicare beneficiaries who are at increased risk for the infection.

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