Organ Transplant

Bioengineering Organs and Organ Transplantation

The United States has a large problem treating the medical conditions of a large portion of its citizens. One would be surprised to find out that the medical expertise are available but shortage of the needed materials and organs result in death of millions of Americans every year. Organ transplantations is the method that is used to treat Organ failure. These afflictions can range from the failure of digestive organs to end stage diabetes or intestinal failure (Yagi 587).
In fact these medical procedures are fairly new even though we have been trying to achieve these results for generations. The technology as well as the understanding of the science has only been achieved during the last half century even though evidence has been found that shows it was attempted in the past. In fact archeological records showing evidence of tissue transplantation has been found as far back as the Bronze Age (Shayan 1). The first successful Organ transplantation occurred in 1955 in which a kidney was replaced in a human. This had never occurred before so it opened up a new era in medicine in which we have studied the transplantation of organs. However, the lack of good immune-suppression medicines and the inability to monitor and control rejection of the organs as well as the worsening donor shortage is having a large impact on our society. This has resulted in new forms of treatment being sought out. Nevertheless, before one can understand the science we must see the problem we are facing (Murphy 1).
The Organ transplantation procedures have been successful thus far with the advances in immunology so it is a sought after procedure. However, there is a large shortage of organs that can be used f...

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...ts. As far as animal testing has gone the clones age much faster than the normal animal. Human clones could also age faster and have their organs harvested sooner (Woloschak 702). An unintended consequence is that the clones would need to be classified. What if the clone doesn’t want his or her organs to be harvested? In fact how would we differentiate between the clone and the real person? So various moral and ethical implications arise during the consideration of different methods and technologies.
Ultimately just because a method is scientifically feasible doesn’t mean it should be chosen because there are variety of other factors that must be considered before we can make a choice on the matter. These questions pose both moral and ethical dilemmas and must be faced head on if we are to adopt any of these various methodologies and methods to meet Organ demand.