Developing the program was an eight-year process; it is the first of its kind. Procurement directors and surgeons across the nation await the outcomes of Pennsylvanias program. There have been at least nineteen families that have signed up for the benefit. Due to investigation of the program, however, there has been some concern whether the money collected is being used to assist families. Nevertheless, funeral aids to induce post-mortem organ donation have also received support from experts and the general public, as they present more ethical values, such as honoring the deceased donor, and potentially increase donation willingness.Some organizations, such as the National Kidney Foundation, oppose financial incentives associated with organ donation claiming, "Offering direct or indirect economic benefits in exchange for organ donation is inconsistent with our values as a society." One argument is it will disproportionately affect the poor. The $300–3,000 reward may act as an incentive for poorer individuals, as opposed to the wealthy who may not find the offered incentives significant. The National Kidney Foundation has noted that financial incentives, such as this Pennsylvania statute, diminish human dignity. Bioethical issues
Deontological
Deontological issues are issues about whether a person has an ethical duty or responsibility to take an action. Nearly all scholars and societies around the world agree that voluntarily donating organs to sick people is ethically permissible. Although nearly all scholars encourage organ donation, fewer scholars believe that all people are ethically required to donate their organs after death.
The surgical process depends upon which organs are being donated. The body is normally restored to as normal an appearance as possible, so that the family can proceed with funeral rites and either cremation or burial. The lungs are highly vulnerable to injury and thus the most difficult to preserve, with only 15–25% of donated organs utilized. History
The first living organ donor in a successful transplant was Ronald Lee Herrick (1931–2010), who donated a kidney to his identical twin brother in 1954. The lead surgeon, Joseph Murray, and the Nephrologist, John Merril won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990 for advances in organ transplantation. The youngest organ donor was a baby with anencephaly, born in 2014, who lived for only 100 minutes and donated his kidneys to an adult with renal failure. The oldest known cornea donor was a 107-year-old Scottish woman, whose corneas were donated after her death in 2016. The oldest known organ donor for an internal organ was a 95-year-old West Virginia man, who donated his liver after he died.The oldest altruistic living organ donor was an 85-year-old woman in Britain, who donated a kidney to a stranger in 2014 after hearing how many people needed to receive a transplant.Researchers were able to develop a novel way to transplant human fetal kidneys into anephric rats to overcome a significant obstacle in impeding human fetal organ transplantations. The human fetal kidneys demonstrated both growth and function within the rats.