Legislative Responses to Organ Transplantation

Organ transplantation has, over a period of a few decades, evolved from a daring experimental medical procedure to a widely used health technology. Many lives have been saved, and the quality of life of many other persons has been immeasurably improved. There is now an abundant literature on the medical aspects of transplantation, and an increasing number of books on the legal and ethical aspects -- aspects with which WHO has been concerned since the World Health Assembly first took up the matter in 1986. This book is the first global collection of laws and regulations dealing with organ transplantation. Also included are the texts of some of the key international and European declarations and statements on the subject. Most of the materials that appear in the book were originally published in the WHO's International Digest of Health Legislation, but have never been collected in one volume before. This book will be useful to parliamentarians, health policy makers, surgeons and other health professionals involved in transplantation, transplant coordinators, ethicists, and others interested in in-depth information on how different governments and institutions have responded to the considerable ethical, legal and policy challenges posed by this important branch of curative medicine.