Alcoholics should not be subject to deprioritization on a liver transplant waiting list if the belief is held that alcoholism is a disease and not an issue of moral failure for which the patient should be blamed.
Withholding information from patients during an informed consent process is ethically unacceptable. Patients may restrict the amount of information they wish to receive or designate someone else to receive the information for them.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(3):209-214. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.3.ecas2-1503.
When a would-be living organ donor wants to accept risk in the name of altruism when there is little chance for benefit or significant chance for harm, physicians are justified in limiting that altruism.
When a severely ill child comes into the emergency room, assent for emergency care is no more required than is parental permission. Conveying the needed care is the top priority.
We really can't promise both more transplants and better outcomes. The controversies over organ allocation really represent intellectual exhaustion in the face of a long series of inadequate policy responses to the decade-long trend of the kidney supply increasing only at the expense of organ quality and patient outcomes.
The AMA Code of Medical Ethics' opinions on confidential care for sexually active minors and physicians' exercise of conscience in refusal of services.