A/Prof. Andrew McGee1, Dale Gardiner2,3
1Australian Centre for Health Law Research, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia, 2NHS Blood and Transplant, Bristol, United Kingdom, 3Notting University Hospital NHS Trust, Nottingham, United Kingdom
Biography:
Dr Andrew McGee is currently Associate Professor of Law in the School of Law, QUT. He holds a PhD in philosophy, in addition to being admitted to practice as a lawyer. His research interests vary widely but his main two fields are the nature of moral reasoning and the definition of death in medical practice.
Abstract:
On 15 August 2024 the Australian Government announced an Australian Law Reform Commission inquiry to examine the possible revision of human tissue laws in Australia. One issue that may be considered is whether the statutory definition of death in the states, territories and at the federal level should be modified to allow the use of normothermic regional perfusion (NRP) in donation after circulatory death (DCD) practice in Australia.
The use of NRP abroad, especially the United States of America, is extremely controversial, conceptually, ethically and legally. In 2021 the American College of Physicians published a statement of concern recommending that the use of NRP-DCD be paused until sound ethical arguments could be mounted in its favour. Since then, several leading medical and bioethics journals in America have published articles taking diametrically opposed positions on the issue, with the debate having become polarised. This debate is particularly relevant for Australia legally, since America’s death declaration statutes are in very similar terms to those operative in Australia.
In this presentation we will highlight a number of the salient conceptual, ethical and legal issues and make suggestions about they can be resolved. We will consider two alternatives:
(1) continuing to treat NRP-DCD as post-mortem donation and exploring whether the law could be changed in a conceptually and ethically satisfying way to allow the practice; and
(2) the possibility of reclassifying NRP-DCD as a pre-mortem measure, the difficulties and challenges we’d face in doing so, and how they might be resolved.
Presentation Slides PDF – Click here