Abstract
Background
Organ donation is commonly evaluated by biomedical ethicists based largely on principlism with autonomy at the top of the “moral mountain.” Lay people may differ in the way they invoke and balance the various ethical interests. We explored lay people’s ethical attitudes to organ donation.
Methods
Respondents (n=196) ranked 42 opinion-statements on organ donation according to a 9-category symmetrical distribution. Statements’ scores were analyzed by averaging-analysis and Q-methodology.
Results
Respondents’ mean (SD) age was 34.5 (10.6) years, 53% were women, 69% Muslims (30% Christians), 29% Saudis (26% Filipinos), and 38% healthcare-related. The most-agreeable statements were “Acceptable if benefit to recipient large,” “Explicit donor consent and family approval for live donation,” “Acceptable if directed to family member,” and “Explicit donor consent and family approval for postmortem donation.” The most-disagreeable statements were “Donor consent and family approval not required for postmortem donation,” “Acceptable with purely materialistic motivation,” and “Only donor no-known objection for postmortem donation.” Women, Christians, and healthcare respondents gave higher rank to “Explicit donor consent and family approval for live donation,” “Only donor family consent required for postmortem donation,” and “Acceptable if organ distribution equitable,” respectively, and Muslims gave more weight to donor/family harm (p ≤0.001). Q-methodology identified various ethical resolution models that were associated with religious affiliation and included relatively “motives-concerned,” “family-benefit-concerned,” “familism-oriented,” and “religious or non-religious altruism-concerned” models. Of 23 neutral statements on averaging-analysis, 48% and 65% received extreme ranks in ≥1 women and men Q-methodology models, respectively.
Conclusion
1) On average, recipient benefit, requirement of both explicit donor consent and family approval, donor-recipient relationship, and motives were predominant considerations; 2) ranking of some statements was associated with respondents’ demographics; 3) Q-methodology identified various ethical resolution models that were partially masked by averaging-analysis; and 4) strong virtue and familism approaches in our respondents provide some empirical evidence against principlism adequacy.
Abbreviations
ANOVA, Analysis of variance; KFSH&RC, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center; REC, Research Ethics Committee; SD, Standard deviation.
Ethics Approval and Consent to Participate
The study complied with the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the Research Ethics Committee (REC) of the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center (KFSH&RC). Written informed consents were provided by all respondents.
Data Sharing Statement
Additional data are available under Supplementary Material-Additional File 1 and Additional File 2. Raw data are available for the corresponding author upon request.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the staff of the Clinical Studies and Empirical Ethics Department for their help in collecting data.
Author Contributions
All authors made substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; took part in drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; gave final approval of the version to be published; and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.
Disclosure
The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.