One key reason all these new forms of transplantation are revolutionary is that they involve non-life-saving organs. Unlike heart, liver, kidney and lung transplants, they are being done to enhance the quality of life or to palliate suffering. Some are being done not to save lives but to allow individuals to create new ones.
These are manifestly ethical goals. But the shift away from saving lives to making them better involves a shift in the ethical thinking that has long formed the foundation of organ transplantation. They require doctors, patients, regulators and the rest of us to rethink the risk and benefit ratio represented by these new forms of transplant.
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