Intrafamilial Organ Donation Is Often an Altruistic Act

2003 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Spital
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Organ Donation ◽  
Genetic Relationship ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Logical Conclusion ◽  
Prima Facie Duty

In their recent article, Glannon and Ross remind us that family members have obligations to help each other that strangers do not have. They argue, I believe correctly, that what creates moral obligations within families is not genetic relationship but rather a sharing of intimacy. For no one are these obligations stronger than they are for parents of young children. This observation leads the authors to the logical conclusion that organ donation by a parent to her child is not optional but rather a prima facie duty. However, Glannon and Ross go a step further by suggesting that because parent-to-child organ donation is a duty, it cannot be altruistic. They assert that “altruistic acts are optional, nonobligatory…supererogatory…. Given that altruism consists in purely optional actions presupposing no duty to aid others, any parental act that counts as meeting a child's needs cannot be altruistic.” Here I think the authors go too far.

scholarly journals Coercion and the Prima Facie Duty to Obey the Law

2020 ◽  
pp. 11-29
Author(s):  
Jhonatan Crowe
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Moral Hazard ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
Social Coordination ◽  
Prima Facie Duty

This article examines the role of coercion in grounding a prima facie duty to obey the positive law. I argue that there is at least a weak prima facie duty to obey the positive law in a minimally effective and just legal system. The fact that a norm holds positive legal status within a minimally effective and just legal system gives people presumptive reason to believe that the norm is a salient and reasonable means of social coordination and therefore that they have pro tanto reason to follow it. Coercive sanctions may bolster the salience of social norms by giving people incentive to follow them. They also make it more likely that an agent’s decision to follow a particular norm will be reasonable, by creating the prospect that the reasons supplied by the sanctions will override any deficits in the salience or reasonableness of the norm itself. A legal system with strong coercive enforcement is therefore more likely than a less coercive system (other things being equal) to present its subjects with both prima facie and pro tanto moral obligations. This reliance on coercion, however, carries a significant moral hazard, since it may bootstrap inefficient or unreasonable norms into a position of epistemological and moral weight.

‘Look it Daddy’

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-119
Author(s):  
Darcey K. Searles
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Family Life ◽  
American English ◽  
Video Conferencing ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Family Interactions ◽  
Life Data ◽  
To Receive

Video-mediated technologies enable families with young children to participate in interactions with remote family members. This article examines how a family with young children uses the affordances of video conferencing to 'show' items or themselves. Findings indicate that there are two types of shows in these remote family interactions: those that are designed to receive identification, and those that are designed to receive appreciation and/or assessment. These shows are also often collaboratively produced between a child and her co-present parent. Finally, this paper considers the implications of these shows for our understanding of how families remotely participate in family life. Data are in American English.

scholarly journals Perceived Support Among Families Deciding About Organ Donation for Their Loved Ones: Donor Vs Nondonor Next Of Kin

2010 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. e52-e61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liva Jacoby ◽  
James Jaccard
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Care ◽  
Organ Donation ◽  
Demographic Data ◽  
Quality Care ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Care Staff ◽  
Next Of Kin ◽  
Perceived Quality Of Care ◽  
Brain Dead

BackgroundFamilies’ experiences in the hospital influence their decisions about donating organs of brain-dead relatives. Meeting families’ support needs during this traumatic time is an obligation and a challenge for critical care staff.Objectives(1) To elicit family members’ accounts of various types of support received and perceived quality of care for themselves and their loved ones when they made the donation decision, and (2) to examine the relationship between these factors and the families’ donation decision.MethodsRetrospective telephone interviews of 199 families from different regions of the country were completed. Aside from demographic data, the survey addressed perceptions of informational, emotional, and instrumental support and quality of care.ResultsOne hundred fifty-four study participants consented to donation; 45 declined. White next of kin were significantly more likely than African Americans to consent. Specific elements of reported support were significantly associated with consent to donate. Donor and nondonor families had differing perceptions of quality care for themselves and their loved ones. Receiving understandable information about organ donation was the strongest predictor of consent.ConclusionsSpecific supportive behaviors by staff as recounted by family members of potential donors were significantly associated with consent to donation. These behaviors lend themselves to creative training and educational programs for staff. Such interventions are essential not only for next of kin of brain-dead patients, but also for staff and ultimately for the public as a whole.

A Prima Facie Duty Approach to Machine Ethics

2011 ◽  
pp. 476-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Leigh Anderson ◽  
Michael Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
Machine Ethics ◽  
Prima Facie Duty

Did the Ancients Care When their Children Died?

1988 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Golden
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Correct Answer ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Burial Practices ◽  
Very Young Children ◽  
Imperial Period

Did the ancients care when their children died? The question is blunt, but not straightforward. How are we to define ‘care’? Whose children – anyone's, family members', one's own? Any thorough answer must be correspondingly complex, taking into account variables of many different kinds. So, for example, it has been argued that mothers cared for their children more than fathers, that very young children were missed less than older ones, that urban and servile populations tended to commemorate young children with gravestones more than others, that variations in burial practices among Greek communities may ‘suggest varying degrees of affection on the part of the parents’, that care for children increased in the later fifth century in Athens or in the Hellenistic period in Greece or in the later Republic or the Imperial period at Rome. In this paper, I make no claim to the nuanced and sophisticated presentation these difficulties demand; I will present evidence from various genres, referring to diverse places and times, concerning children from a range of ages. My aim is modest: to consider two arguments that have been applied to this subject. My question has been raised several times within the last few years, each time by first-rate scholars, and these have given what I think is clearly the correct answer. Yet that answer has not been expressed as firmly as it might be; and in giving it some have raised an issue which needs clarification. Let these be my excuses for opening the question again.

Conjunctivitis-Otitis Syndrome

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 142-142
Author(s):  
ROBERT K. WHITSON
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Otitis Media ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
Clinical Syndrome ◽  
Pediatric Practice ◽  
Eye Symptoms ◽  
Apparent Association

To the Editor.— The recent article by Bodor1 is an excellent discussion of a clinical syndrome virtually unrecognized in standard textbooks. However, his article does not clearly indicate the frequency of associated otitis media in patients with eye symptoms only, nor does it discuss treatment and outcome in patients with the conjunctivitis-otitis syndrome. Because of the apparent association between conjunctivitis and otitis in young children, I started a study in my private pediatric practice to determine the frequency of this association.

Abstract 16: Sex Disparities in Organ Donation: Finding an Equal Donor Pool

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (Suppl_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Yee ◽  
Seyedeh Maryam Hosseini ◽  
Bianca Duarte ◽  
Shannon Knapp ◽  
Nancy K Sweitzer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Organ Donation ◽  
Family Member ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Organ Donor ◽  
Medical Mistrust ◽  
Organ Donors ◽  
Donor Pool ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Willingness To Donate ◽  
Amazon's Mechanical Turk

Introduction: The majority of living organ donors are women, and the majority of deceased organ donors are men. This poses a problem for transplant candidates who have worsened survival with sex mismatched organs. The objective of this study was to identify reasons for disparities in organ donation between sexes and identify strategies to increase organ donors. Methods: We conducted a fifteen question survey using a crowdsourcing marketplace, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, in September 2019. The survey assessed how participants make decisions about becoming an organ donor. The survey was distributed to U.S. adult participants, including eight write-in questions and two Likert scale questions. Qualitative descriptive analyses were used to understand reasons for and against becoming an organ donor. Quantitative results were compared with t test. Results: Among the 667 eligible participants representing 49 states, 54.9% were women and 63.1% were in the 18-40 age group. The majority of men (64.8%) and women (63.4%) were registered organ donors. Among men and women donors, three themes guided their willingness to donate: desire to help others, personal experience with organ donors/recipients, and believing organs would have no use to the donor once dead. Among men and women non-donors, decisions were guided by three themes: no reason, medical mistrust, considering becoming a donor. Themes varied by sex when considering whether to donate organs of a deceased family member. Women were guided equally by two themes: family member’s wishes and believing the deceased family member had no further use for organs. Men had similar themes but valued the family member’s wishes more. Women’s willingness to donate their own organs to family members (p=0.03) and strangers (p=0.02) was significantly higher than men. Among non-donors, both sexes would consider becoming organ donors if more information was provided. Conclusion: In a national survey of adults, women and men had similar reasons for becoming and not becoming an organ donor. However compared to men, women were more willing to donate their organs and more altruistic in the donation of family members’ organs. Women’s deceased organ donation may increase with further communication of women’s wishes before death and by improved public education about organ donation.

Ethical Particularism and Morally Relevant Properties

2021 ◽  
pp. 37-50
Author(s):  
Jonathan Dancy
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Moral Particularism ◽  
The Real ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Prima Facie Duty ◽  
Principle Theory

This paper follows a path that takes us from utilitarianism to particularism. Utilitarianism is the leading one-principle theory; its falsehood is here simply asserted. W. D. Ross’s theory of prima facie duty is offered as the strongest many-principle theory. Ross’s two accounts of his notion of a prima facie duty are considered and criticized. But the real criticism of his view is that being a prima facie duty is a context-sensitive notion, since a feature that is a prima facie duty-making feature in one case may be prevented from playing that role in another. Since the strongest many-principle theory is therefore false, the only conclusion is a no-principle theory: a theory that allows moral reasons but does not suppose that they behave in the regular way required for there to be moral principles—namely, moral particularism.

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