Browse the NewsHour's coverage of health. The Transplant Recipients International Organization, Inc. homepage, featuring the National Organ Waiting List. The Washington Hospital Center homepage.
T here are many positive aspects to organ donation.
But critics argue that the methods used to procure organs may be crossing the line of what's ethical. Controversial laws and dangerous chemicals are at the center of the debate. Washington, D.C. is the only place in the country that allows doctors to preserve patients organs for transplant without family consent. But even before a family's consent in many states, doctors routinely flush kidneys and other organs with chemical preservatives to keep them viable long enough to get permission for transplantation. This involves an obtrusive surgical procedure and some families are outraged, calling the aggressive strategy mutilation of the dead.