Fairness and the Tyranny of Potential in Kidney Transplantation

• Autores: Sharon R. Kaufman
• Localización: Current anthropology: A world journal of the sciences of man, ISSN 0011-3204, Nº. Extra 7, 2013 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Potentiality and humanness : revisiting the anthropological object in contemporary biomedicine), págs. 56-66
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The right to health and life is firmly established in the industrialized world, and advanced age is no longer a reason to deny medical treatment. Yet scarce and expensive medical resources, changing demographics, and expanding societal demands reveal how that right is more controversial than ever before. The case of kidney transplantation in the United States is a quintessential example of a broad health equity predicament in which the potential for greater longevity brings with it the problems of fairness and equity. As those over 70 and 80 come to constitute more of the �public� in aging societies, how then are nations to reconstitute the practice of fairness and the idea of public good? This essay examines this quandary by describing the potentiality we assign to kidneys, older persons, and the organ supply itself and by exploring the effects of that potentiality in three realms: schemes for fairness in the US organ transplant distribution system, living donation from younger to older persons, and the rise of anonymous living donation and web-based matching. Together, these realms reveal a �tyranny of potential� amid the changing character of altruism, obligation, accounting, and market forces.