A Conversation with Peter A. Lawler (Part II)

Peter A. Lawler, Ph.D., is Dana Professor and Chair of the Department of Government and International Studies at Berry College, in Georgia, and a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics.

D. Joy Riley, M.D., M.A., is Executive Director of The Tennessee Center for Bioethics & Culture.

Riley: The subject is organ transplantation, and we have looked at the situation in the United States. Now let’s go beyond the borders of the US. There is certainly a market in a number of countries, one of which is India. There, often a donor (for lack of a ...read more

A Conversation with Peter A. Lawler (Part I)

An Interview by D. Joy Riley, M.D., M.A.

Dr. Peter A. Lawler, Ph.D., is Dana Professor and Chair of the Department of Government and International Studies at Berry College, in Georgia, and a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics

D. Joy Riley: Today’s subject is organ transplantation. There are tens of thousands of people on the list in the United States, needing organ transplantation. This is an area of interest for you, I understand.

Peter A. Lawler: This is a tough issue. There are two ways of dealing with this: dialysis or transplantation. Dialysis is a horrible way to ...read more

Presuming Consent and More

>(first published on 10 August 2007 at www.bioethics.com; used with permission)

A debate regarding organ donation is getting underway in the UK: it is a debate about “presumed consent.” Presumed consent means that although no permission form is signed, and there is no documented mandated discussion with anyone, a deceased person’s organs can be harvested by the state for transplantation. Another name for this is “opting out”: your organs will be harvested after death unless you have specifically requested that such not occur. The current laws in the UK are revisions of the Human Tissue Act in 1961, and are voluntary, or ...read more