"The Case for Mandatory Organ Donation" - A Review (Reading Assignment, Week 7)

In “The Case for Mandatory Organ Donation” (2007), by Scott Carney, he makes the argument that organ donation should not be a choice; instead Carney believes that organs should be donated regardless of the wishes of the deceased and their family. In this article Carney quotes Eric Johnson, a professor at Columbia University as saying, “…there would be a [an] increase of between 16 percent to 50 percent in the availability of organs, and others have speculated that this would eliminate the shortage of organs in some categories” (2007). The argument that Carney has put together is very effective and is quite persuasive to solving the problem of a lack of organs to those that need transplants. However there are holes in the argument that Carney has proposed.

For example, although the opposition is stated briefly within the article, there is little attention given to the argument of spirituality and the beliefs that come along with some people’s thoughts on the afterlife and what happens to the human body after one passes away. Carney also uses an argument made by Aaron Spital and James Stacey Taylor in their article, “Routine Recovery of Cadaveric Organs for Transplantation: Consistent, Fair, and Life-Saving,” published by the American Society of Nephrology, that states, “…the government reserves the right to draft young men against their will into war and risk their lives in combat operations” (as cited in Carney, 2007). This statement seems to constitute a fallacy in that it is drawing the reader’s attention away from the actual argument and is instead trying to play upon a sense of patriotic obligation. It is in the author of this review’s opinion that this quote is distracting from the argument and takes away from the validity of what is being proposed.

The target audience of the proposal is the American public, those that have the ability to put a policy into action to make organ donation mandatory, however the author of this review does not believe that the target audience would be completely convinced by the article that Carney has written. All in all there is a lot of good information contained in the essay, and there is definitely a problem that needs to be confronted, however the proposed solution does not seem to have been completely convincing to the target audience.



Carney, S. (2007, May 8). The Case for Mandatory Organ Donation. Wired. Retrieved March 17, 2008 from http://www.wired.com/print/medtech/health/news/2007/05/india_transplants_donorpolicy


Spital, A. & Taylor, J.S. (2007, January 31). Routine Recovery of Cadaveric Organs for Transplantation: Consistent, Fair, and Life-Saving [Electronic Version]. Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, 2, 300-303.