Exclusionary criteria and suicidal behavior: Comment on "Should a patient who attempted suicide receive a liver transplant?"

Journal of Clinical Ethics

Volumn 7, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 277-283

  Aulisio, Mark P ^a   Arnold, Robert M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH SCHOOL OF MEDICINE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ADDICTION; ADULT; ANALYTICAL APPROACH; CASE REPORT; FEMALE; HEALTH CARE AND PUBLIC HEALTH; HUMAN; LIVER TRANSPLANTATION; MEDICAL ETHICS; NOTE; PATIENT SELECTION; RESOURCE ALLOCATION; STANDARD; SUICIDE ATTEMPT; UNCERTAINTY;

ANALYTICAL APPROACH; HEALTH CARE AND PUBLIC HEALTH;

ADULT; ETHICS, MEDICAL; FEMALE; HUMANS; LIVER TRANSPLANTATION; PATIENT SELECTION; RESOURCE ALLOCATION; SUBSTANCE-RELATED DISORDERS; SUICIDE, ATTEMPTED; UNCERTAINTY;

EID: 0030226461     PISSN: 10467890     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (8)

1. Throughout our discussion we will use the terms "alcoholics," "drug abusers," and "failed suicide" to refer to categories of patients. We are uncomfortable with referring to patients this way, but it is too stylistically cumbersome not to do so.
2. See, for example, American Medical Association, Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, "Ethical Considerations in the Allocation of Organs and Other Scarce Medical Resources Among Patients," Archives of Internal Medicine 155 (1995): 29-40;
3. C. Miller, J. Kamean, and P.D. Berk, "Liver Transplantation for Alcoholic Hepatitis? An Unanswered Question," Alcoholism, Clinical and Experimental Research 18, no. 2 (1994): 224-27;
4. O.S. Surman and R. Purtillo, "Reevaluation of Organ Transplantation Criteria: Allocation of Scarce Resources to Borderline Candidates," Psychomatics 33, no. 2 (1992): 202-12;
5. M.F. Sorrell, R.K. Zetterman, and J.P. Donovan, "Alcohol and Liver Transplantation: The Controversy Continues," Alcoholism, Clinical and Experimental Research 18, no. 2 (1994): 222-23.
6. We want to emphasize that we are not claiming to give an exhaustive account of all possible exclusionary criteria. Our aim is only to examine some of the most intuitively plausible and commonly proposed criteria.
7. This how C. Cohen et al., "Alcoholics and Liver Transplantation," Journal of the American Medical Association 265, no. 10 (1991): 1299-1301,
8. interpret one of the arguments of A.H. Moss and M. Siegler, "Should Alcoholics Compete Equally for Liver Transplantation?" Journal of the American Medical Association 265, no. 10 (1991): 1295-98. Though there are strands of the desert argument in Moss and Siegler, their position is better characterized under the fault-based and social morality criteria.