The emergence of controlled, Maastricht Category III, non-heart-beating organ donation programs has the potential to greatly increase the supply of donor solid organs by increasing the number of potential donors. Category III donation involves unconscious and dying intensive care patients whose organs become available for transplant after life-sustaining treatments are withdrawn, usually on grounds of futility. The shortfall in organs from heart-beating organ donation following brain death has prompted a surge of interest in NHBD. In a recent editorial, the British (...) Medical Journal described NHBD as representing “a challenge which the medical profession has to take up.”. (shrink)

In the pages that are to follow I shall try to discuss the validity and the sufficiency of a celebrated moral principle of Kant's “So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, always as an end, never merely as a means.” In doing so, I shall say quite a lot about Kant, because his statement of the principle has had great influence, because he gave his genius to its elaboration, because he (...) illustrated and defended it in ways that deserve a close examination. On the other hand, my principal purpose is not to supply a piece of Kantian exegesis interspersed with sundry criticisms. In the main I want to discuss the principle, as people say, “on its merits.” In so far as I discuss Kant himself, I am doing so with the object of eliciting these merits. (shrink)