HHS contracts with OPTN/UNOS to manage the nation’s organ transplant system. OPTN/UNOS’s recent proposed changes to its guidelines are considered discriminatory and worse by disability rights leaders. According to Stephen Mikochik, “By identifying patients with upper spinal cord injuries as DCD candidates, requiring solicitation of their organs for transplant, necessarily entailing withdrawal of life-support and their deaths, the proposal singles out a class of persons, disabled under federal civil rights law for adverse treatment. This constitutes discrimination.”
Not Dead Yet
“Organ Procurement Guidelines, Health Care Decisions and People with Disabilities”
January 3, 2012
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