Ethics and VCA transplants: same issues or new challenges?

Vascular composite allografts (VCAs) are transplants of hands, face, penis, or uterus from deceased and sometimes (in the case of uterus) living donors. The ethics of solid organ donation and transplant have been discussed for decades, with policies and practices long established and ethics approaches widely discussed. VCAs have many characteristics that make them similar to solid organ transplants, but they also raise novel issues including risk-benefit balance for non-lifesaving therapies, decisions about deceased donation, evaluation of recipients, alternative therapies, and others. This talk will assess the similar and novel ethical issues and propose a framework for assessing the ethics of VCAs.