Public solicitation of organs from living donors: to what extent Belgian professionals should be able to comply to ethical principles?

Every year, people die while waiting on an organ donation while others must wait for a long period of time due to the increasing demand for organs. Today, more than a thousand Belgians are waiting for an organ, and some will die before getting one. Our country might have one of the largest deceased donor pools due to the opting-out principle, but the demand will probably never meet the offer, creating a shortage phenomenon. That is why health professionals working in the transplant world always try to find ethical solutions to increase the organ pool. Living organ donation have been used as one of the solutions. Public solicitation has been used to try to fill the gap in missing organ donation and introduced us to directed altruistic donation. In this thesis we will consider the issues and questions raised by directed altruistic donations and, possibly, to identify directions through which it would be possible to guarantee the ethical and legally admissible character of this type of donation. We held seven interviews with health transplant professionals: six with transplant coordinators and one psychologist from three different transplant centers in Belgium to collect information. All interviews were built around the same questionnaire inspired by The Netherland’s guidelines on directed altruistic donation and the conclusion of opinion n° 72 of the Belgian Bioethics Committee. The conclusion that came out of our research states that directed altruistic donation through public solicitation, to answer the shortage phenomenon, raised both ethical and financial concerns in the health transplant world. If it was made feasible, it would need to be under strict nationwide guidelines. Then, each transplant center will have to decide to agree to it or not as some transplant professionals are not at ease with the situation.