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The Pros And Cons Of Organ Transplantation

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Even though at the time of the Cold War, Americans’ focus were more toward the prevention of communism rather than the development in medication, the success in organ transplantation helped the U.S. in stepping forward in the arms race against Russia. During the Cold war, Americans lived in the fear of Red Scares; people were panicking throughout the nation and were trying to keep communist power under control. The goal of the U.S. was to be able to win the arm race so that communism could be controlled. Advancements which include not only win through technologies developments such as Apollo 11 in the moon landing project, but also medical developments such as organ transplantation. “The U.S. military forces were under the supervision of the …show more content…

After the procedure done of kidney transplantation in 1954, people started to question whether if it is truly ethical to harvest the organ of a healthy human being and taking the risk of worsting donor’s health in order to extend the life of the patients with organ failures. Surgeon Murray believes that “For the first time, in medical history, a normal healthy person was to be subjected to a major surgical operation not for his own benefit” (Interview with Murray). Medical procedures were meant to make people healthier and save more lives, but through the practice of organ transitions, the donors had to undergo procedures that are not beneficial for them and could potentially die from, which is exactly the opposite of the purpose for medical procedures. When the reality of transplantation semi-violated the purpose of medical practices, people in the nation holds different opinion on the issues and conflicts arose. The question then became that if one could take away the life of one healthy human and give out all his/her organs to six or seven people and save all their lives, is it beneficial to the society overall to just sacrifice the life of one for the recovery of the six or seven, is that morally wrong? It became hard to tell if social benefits is more important than moral or vise versa. Science fiction books such as Never Let Me Go were

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