End of life issues : xenotransplantation

Abstract

In thinking about end of life issues the perspective of palliative care contrasts sharply with the discussion of developing new technologies to prolong life. I want to use the example of xenotransplantation to discuss this, with reference to the European project on this topic co-ordinated from Lueneburg, Germany, and in which I was responsible for the ethical part. In providing an overview of the ethical results of the project it was decided by the project team to use a framework for analysis based on the ethical matrix developed by Ben Mepham (Mepham, 1995). This approach proceeds by identifying the main interested parties affected by a certain development, in this case xenotransplantation, and applying certain principles to them. The principles used by Ben Mepham are themselves based on the four principles of biomedical ethics advocated by Tom Beauchamp and James Childress - beneficence, nonmaleficence, autonomy and justice (Beauchamp and Childress, 1994). In Mepham's version the three principles are well-being, autonomy and justice.