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News and Events:Savannah Thompson-Hoffman
Last fall, as part of a bioethics internship seminar, I was placed in the University of Virginia’s Strickler Transplant Center.
As a result of a personal experience with a patient with Hepatitis C and several other risk factors who was awaiting his second
liver transplant, I developed a paper proposing a new scheme for the allocation of livers for transplantation. At the suggestion of
Dr. Pruett, the president of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), and with the encouragement of Dr. Margaret Mohrmann and
Phyllis Yensan of UVA’s Strickler Transplant Center, I submitted an abstract of the paper to the review board of the National Dilemmas
and Struggles in Transplantation Conference in Chicago in April 2008. The abstract won one of the three best abstract awards, which includes
an honorarium of $1000 to speak at this forum of transplant surgeons and physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, and ethicists who are
gathering to discuss and debate issues in the field of solid organ transplantation, as well as complimentary conference registration and
two nights in a conference hotel.Briefly, my paper takes the current United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) scheme for the allocation of livers for transplantation, which is based on medical urgency, and incorporates an additional measure of medical utility, weighing medical utility and medical urgency equally. Medical urgency is often a reflection of health so impaired that late stage liver transplants are unsuccessful and patient and the transplanted liver are lost, as was the case with my patient. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to present my allocation proposal at the conference in April -- an opportunity that would not have been possible without the inspiration and support of so many encouraging members of the bioethics department. |