ABSTRACT
The author is the father of a seven-year old child who was shot in an attempted robbery, whose organs and corneas were donated to seven people. He traces the impact of decisions to donate organs at a time when COVID-19 has brought an unprecedented level of stress on health services. He notes that, although most countries make it either difficult or impossible for donor families to communicate with their recipients, even if both sides want to, tens of thousands of families in the United States have written to each other, or even met face to face, with therapeutic results in the great majority of cases.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Child , Humans , Male , Tissue Donors , United StatesABSTRACT
On 27 September 2018 the Italian Committee for Bioethics (ICB) adopted an opinion regarding the possibility of an exception to the anonymity obligation when both parties agree and have signed an appropriate informed consent form. According to the IBC any contact between the donor's family and recipient must be managed by a third-party body pertaining to the National Health Service, established to guarantee strict control over the expression of consent in order to avoid any risk of inappropriate behaviour. The paper traces how Reg and Maggie Green, on holiday from California, donated the organs of their seven-year old son, Nicholas, to seven Italians after he had been shot in a carjacking on the Salerno-Reggio Calabria highway in 1994. Reluctant as a foreigner to propose a change in Italian law that effectively prevents the two sides from contacting each other, Reg Green held back for 22 years until, at age 87, he began a public campaign to voice his concern that the law was hurting transplant families rather than helping them. (This is the Italian translation of an article published in the Annali dell'Istituto Superiore di Sanità 2019; 55(1):6-9. https://doi.org/10.4415/ANN_19_01_03).
