Voor wat hoort wat? Hedendaagse pleidooien voor een consequentiemodel bij orgaandonaties en hun argumenten

One of the distributive principles used to allocate scarce donor organs
is to prioritise persons who themselves have indicated a willingness
to be an organ donor. In this article we examine the most important
types of arguments in favour of such a so-called consequential
model: the utilitarian argument that a consequential model leads
to more potential donors and thus saves lives, and the egalitarian
argument that donating and receiving should take place on the basis
of reciprocity. After exploring how these arguments recur in scholarly
and in popular publications, we compare the four countries worldwide
that have introduced some form of a consequential model: Singapore,
Israel, Chile, and Japan. Both types of arguments played a role in
the introduction of such a model in those countries. Whilst all four
countries have seen some increase in the numbers of potential donors
and of actual transplants, it is not clear to what extent this growth can
be ascribed to the introduction of a consequential allocation model.