Although the history of organ transplant has its roots in ancient Christian mythology, it is only in the past fifty years that body parts from the deceased have successfully been procured and transplanted into a living person. The three critical issues that Robert Veatch outlined in the first edition of his seminal study Transplantation Ethics still remain: deciding when human beings are dead; deciding when it is ethical to procure organs; and deciding how to allocate organs, once procured. However, much has changed in the field of transplantation ethics during the past fifteen years. Enormous strides have been made in immunosuppression. Alternatives to the donation model are debated much more openly. Living donors are used more widely and hand and face transplants have become more common, raising issues of personal identity. In this second edition of Transplantation Ethics, coauthored by Lainie F. Ross, transplant professionals and advocates will find a comprehensive update of this critical work on transplantation policies.--Publisher description.

1. Religious and cultural perspectives -- 2. An ethical framework: General theories of ethics -- Part I. Defining Death -- 3. The Dead Donor Rule and the concept of death -- 4. The Whole-Brain Concept of Death -- 5. The Circulatory, or Somatic, Concept of Death -- 6. The Higher-Brain Concept of Death -- 7. The Conscience Clause: How much individual choice can our society tolerate in defining death -- 8. Crafting a new definition-of-death law -- Part II. Procuring Organs -- 9. The Donation Model -- 10. Routine salvaging and presumed consent -- 11. Markets for organs -- 12. Live-donor transplants -- 13. High-risk donors -- 14. Xenotransplants: Using organs from animals -- 15. The media's impact on transplants and directed donation -- Part III. Allocating Organs -- 16. The roles of the clinician and the public -- 17. A general moral theory of organ allocation -- 18. Voluntary risks and allocation: Does the alcoholic deserve a new liver? -- 19. Multi-organ, split-organ, and repeat transplants -- 20. The role of age in allocation -- 21. The role of status: The cases of Mickey Mantle, Robert Casey, Steve Jobs, and Dick Cheney -- 22. Geography and other causes of allocation disparities -- 23. Socially directed donation: Restricting donation by social group -- 24. Elective organ transplantation -- Vascularized composite allografts: Hand, face, and uterine transplants.