Reference no: EM13339026

Your assignment is to make the decision using utilitarian ethics--as this week's classwork and discussions have brought you that skill--and then to write it up in the form of a Memorandum for the hospital records. Remember that this record could be reviewed by the Peer Review Committee or the Hospital Trustees at a later date.

This is Utilitarian Week in our course. Employ what you have learned from J. S. Mill and Utilitarianism this week AND one other of our course's ethicists (of your choice) from earlier weeks.

The Memorandum should be at least two double-spaced pages with a maximum of three pages, in memorandum form, ready to become an official item of record.

One of the great ongoing situations that calls for ethical decision making is the reality that there is almost always a greater need for something than there is a supply to meet the need.

For our assignment and scenario, the demand is the life-and-death situation of the need for transplantable organs and the rather small and transitory supply. Hard decisions need to be made, and there is little time to think things through. These are emergency situations.

Transplantable organs become available on short notice--usually because a donor has died for reasons unrelated to the organ. They need to be removed and transplanted very quickly because they only remain fresh for a limited period. Then there is the whole complicated issue of tissue type matching. There is also an ongoing concern about how long recipients can wait.