Altruistic Gift or Unfair Preference?: Directed Organ Donation of Clinicians to Patients Under Their Care

Directed organ donation is often described as a gift given from one person to another. This act is construed as altruistic, heroic, and even sacred. Normally, the right to bodily autonomy of persons wishing to gift and to receive should be respected. However, the act is complicated when the giver is a clinician gifting an organ to a patient under their care. Framed within the context of this relationship, issues of power dynamics, preferential treatment, and the ethics of gift-giving between clinicians and patients complicate matters. Given this complex relationship, it would be unethical for a clinician to donate one of their own organs to a patient under their care.
In this flash presentation I will present the case of Dr. Susan Hou, a transplant nephrologist who donated one of her own kidneys to one of her patients. I intend to argue that it is unethical for an individual in Dr. Hou’s position to donate one of their own organs to one of their own patients because it crosses boundaries and is an inequitable gift that cannot be offered to any other patients under the physician’s care. Doing so would constitute at least an implicit preference for the recipient(s) over and above other patients who ought to receive equitable care.