Ethical Principles of Organ Donation. Bioethical considerations (A Colloquium on the Congress "Gift for Life. Considerations on Organ Donation")

The organ shortage has motivated a host of efforts to increase organ supply, some of which are controversial, such as the acceptance of expanded criteria for increasing cadaveric donors pool (for instance, older and sicker donors), donation after cardiac death (so-called nonheart-beating donation) and the increasing number of living organ donors (outside of the living related donation). The purpose of this essay is to explore some of the ethical issues involved in transplantation and particularly those connected to recent proposals, which seek to address the scarcity of organs, but at the same time might threaten the applicability of the notion of donation in the context of organ transplantation