Heart Transplant Decisions

Heart Transplant Decisions

Memorandum

To: Peer Review Committee Camp; Hospital Trustees

From: Lead Surgeon

Date: 01/19/2014

Re: Heart Transplant Decision

The purpose of this memorandum is to inform and describe the process in which I decided on who would be awarded the heart transplant. The time to make this decision is very short, but the decision must be made with professional ethical choices. There were three candidates who were a match: Jerry a 55 year old male, Lisa a 12 year old girl, and Ozzy a 38 year old male. There were two ethical dilemmas I had faced when deciding who should be awarded the transplant. The first dilemma was who I will choose as the recipient of the heart transplant. I based my decisions on the best ethical theory and my decision will result who would have the best outcome. I had to decide which recipient who would receive the greatest amount of good from the transplant. My ultimate decision took into account “that the rightness or wrongness of actions is determined by the goodness or badness of their consequences” (Ruggiero, p.145). I took into account the background and future of the three potential recipients when deciding.

The first patient is 55-year-old Jerry who is a devoted family man. A transplant can add 10-15 years to his life. Although he needs a new heart due to the fact he took steroids during his bodybuilding phase in his 20’s we can’t hold that against him since back then no one had any knowledge of steroids as there is now, such as the harm that can be done by taking them. “We can’t classify the acts in the distant past as ethical or morally neutral, even though people thought them so. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem reasonable to say the acts were unethical, because the people who performed them had no way of knowing the harm that would result.” (Ruggiero p.61, para. 2)

Our second patient is young Lisa, a 12-year-old girl who has suffered health issues all her life. With a transplant for young Lisa, the facts...