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A Review of Legal Vacuums in the Issue of Transplanting Organs Taken from Brain Dead Patients
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Elaheh Saghi   1, Seyyed Mousa Hashemi Tonekaboni |
| 1- , el_saghi@yahoo.com |
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Abstract: (5350 Views) |
Background: One of the new and important medical issues in treatment of patients is harvesting organs from brain-dead patients to be transplanted into patients in need. The issue of transplanting organs harvested from brain-dead patients is one of the emerging issues, with many positive and negative potential consequences and therefore it should be regulated by legislation. In this respect, the legislator has decided to regulate the issue of organ transplantation by providing a legal act that was ratified in 2001. Although the legislation could eliminate some ambiguities in this regard, but in practice, there are still some weaknesses and ambiguities in the law. This article examines the gaps and shortcomings of that law regarding organ transplants taken from brain dead patients and provides suggestions in order to reduce legal problems of the emerging efforts in this relatively new field of medicine.
Methods: Literature review, descriptive methods and, when necessary, expert opinions, mainly collected through interviews with experts of the field, were used to explain and analyze the relevant issues.
Results: The organ transplantation law deals with issues such as a person's will to donate organs, consent of the donor's relatives for donating the organs and ascertainment regarding occurrence of brain death. Although the act has been relatively useful, there are such shortcomings in it that cause many problems for its application in practice (e.g. not recognizing the organ donation card as a proof for consent, not determining the exact time of death in brain dead patients, not determining the consequences in cases of refusal to give consent by relatives or cases regarding unidentified brain dead patients.
Although the most effective and important way to solve these problems includes revision, correction and completion of the existing law, obtaining the legal permission issued by the supreme leader or his representative in this regard (e.g. about unidentified brain dead patients) may be considered as a quick solution.
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| Keywords: brain death, organ transplantation, legal vacuums, legal solutions |
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Full-Text [PDF 917 kb]
(4017 Downloads)
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Type of Article: Research Article |
Subject:
Forensic Medicine
Received: 2015/12/20 | Accepted: 2016/05/15 | ePublished: 2017/06/21
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