ABSTRACT
The new French bioethical legislation does not introduce any major changes in the area of organ transplantation. It does, however, facilitate the implementation of cross-over donation programs by increasing the number of living donor/recipient pairs eligible to participate in the program. By setting the number of pairs at six, the law is likely to allow this promising transplant program to take off. In order to mitigate the risk of a donor withdrawing and to facilitate the matching, the legislator has chosen to integrate a deceased donor organ to initiate the cross-donation program. This pragmatic choice reflects the hybrid regime of cross-over donation, since the legislator, while reaffirming the attachment to the principles of living donation, borrows from the logic of post-mortem donation.
Subject(s)
Kidney Transplantation , Tissue and Organ Procurement , Humans , Living DonorsABSTRACT
The new French bioethical legislation does not introduce any major changes in the area of organ transplantation. It does, however, facilitate the implementation of cross-over donation programs by increasing the number of living donor/recipient pairs eligible to participate in the program. By setting the number of pairs at six, the law is likely to allow this promising transplant program to take off. In order to mitigate the risk of a donor withdrawing and to facilitate the matching, the legislator has chosen to integrate a deceased donor organ to initiate the cross-donation program. This pragmatic choice reflects the hybrid regime of cross-over donation, since the legislator, while reaffirming the attachment to the principles of living donation, borrows from the logic of post-mortem donation.
Subject(s)
Living Donors , Humans , Living Donors/ethics , Living Donors/legislation & jurisprudenceABSTRACT
Digitization in transplantation is not a new phenomenon. Algorithms are being used, for example, to allocate organs based on medical compatibility and priority criteria. However, digitization is accelerating as computer scientists and physicians increasingly develop and use machine learning (ML) models to obtain better predictions on the chances of a successful transplant. The objective of the article is to shed light on the potential threats to equitable access to organs allocated through algorithms, whether these are the consequence of political choices made upstream of digitization or of the algorithmic design, or are produced by self-learning algorithms. The article shows that achieving equitable access requires an overall vision of the algorithmic development process and that European legal norms only partially contribute to preventing harm and addressing equality in access to organs.
ABSTRACT
Genetic discrimination (GD) is the differential or unfair profiling of an individual on the basis of genetic data. This article summarizes the actions of the Genetic Discrimination Observatory (GDO) in addressing GD and recent developments in GD since late 2020. It shows how GD can take many forms in today's rapidly evolving society.
Subject(s)
Coronavirus Infections , Ethics, Research , Pandemics , Pneumonia, Viral , Betacoronavirus , Biological Therapy , COVID-19 , Humans , SARS-CoV-2ABSTRACT
Under international human rights law, States can limit the exercise of most human rights if it is necessary to protect the rights of others or collective interests. The exceptional circumstances brought by the COVID-19 global pandemic lead to more extensive, on both their scope and their duration, restrictions of human rights than in usual times. This article introduces the States' specific right to derogate to human rights in circumstances of public emergency and the conditions of a legitimate derogation in the context of COVID-19. It argues that States must ensure that the general measures they adopt to face the crisis do not disproportionally harm vulnerable people.
