dispassionate

[hambro]

I'm sorry if this is a bit grim, but I would like serious opinions. Example: a healthy man in his early 30's; how many fatally ill people could (potentially) be saved by transplanting his functioning parts for their non-functioning parts? If it were more than one, would this be morally objectionable (providing of course that the donor was complicit)? This is not a perversion on my part, but a psychological block that no amount of psychiatric help has conquered thus far. Thankyou.

[Octavius]

I think that of the five vital organs - Kidney, Liver, Heart, Spleen, Lung, only 1 lung and 1 kidney could be transplanted.  Other than that you have bonemarrow etc..

[AB Editor]

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[galltin]

I'm sorry I don't quite see what you mean. Do you mean live donation? Or donation once donor is dead? If live donation then only bone marrow and 1 kidney can be given (I don't think a doctor would consider taking a lung from anyone still alive).There was a case some years back where a father wanted to donate a kidney to each of his 2 sons and then go on to dialysis himself but the consultant wouldn't go for it. If you mean donation after death then you've got 2 kidneys, a liver or possibly 2 can be got for 2 children from 1 adult liver, a heart, lungs (or heart/lungs),and more minor things such as eyes pancreas.

[hambro]

my theoretical proposal involves the donor giving up his life, thereby facilitating the recovery of a number of otherwise fatally ill recipients. From answers already posted it seems that more than one life can be salvaged from the yielding of another, but it's really the moral side of this that interests me. Could the quality of a healthy person's life ever be judged to be so low as to make this 'yielding' seem like 'collateral damage'?

[el duerino]

no - the psychological health of the donor would never allow it. no right minded person would wish to die unless in a terminal condition anyway.

[galltin]

No.

Also no Doctor would even begin to contemplate doing it as it would be murder.