To the Editor:
Re “Transplants and Rationing” (editorial, Feb. 28):
I read with shock and revulsion about the proposed plan to allocate donated kidneys to younger patients rather than older ones. Why should some human lives be valued more highly than others?
The notion that kidneys should go to recipients where the organs might enjoy “the longest functional lives” is morally repugnant. This is a very slippery medical slope. Please, let’s not set foot on it.
Luana K. Lewis
Bronxville, N.Y., Feb. 28, 2011
To the Editor:
Not only are the new proposals for the distribution of kidneys rational, but they are also ethical. Transplantable kidneys, as a very scarce resource, possess in proportion an inherent moral value since they are intrinsic to the moral good achieved by clinically successful transplantation.
To secure this good, we must, in the interests of an ethical kidney transplant policy, distribute kidneys in a manner respectful of their integrity.
T. Patrick Hill
New Brunswick, N.J., Feb. 28, 2011
The writer is a senior policy fellow at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University and a clinical ethics consultant in the Neonatology Division of U.M.D.N.J.-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 