 The national Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN)
Special Activity of Leonard Bucklin
Bucklin is specially proud of his past work on
for the United Network for Organ Sharing, an organization that saves thousands
of lives each year.
UNOS runs the national Organ Procurement
and Transplantation Network (OPTN). The OPTN coordinates over 400
medical entities to provide the equitable allocation of organs and appropriate
professional standards for life-saving
transplants throughout the United States. The ethics issues involved in making
this daily equitable allocation are sensitive and newsworthy.
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Through a national Organ Center, UNOS matches donors to
recipients 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
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UNOS develops the national regulations and policies
that maximize the limited supply of organs and give all patients a fair
chance at receiving the organ they need -- regardless of age, sex, race,
lifestyle, financial or social status.
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UNOS sets professional standards for ethical, efficient and
quality patient care in transplant hospitals.
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Through the Organ Center, UNOS manages the national
transplant waiting list.
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UNOS maintains the database that contains all clinical
transplant data. These data are used to improve the medicine and science of
transplantation, develop organ allocation policy, aid scientific research
and support transplant professionals in caring for patients.
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UNOS monitors every organ match to ensure adherence to UNOS
policy.
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Through nationwide publicity campaigns, UNOS raises public
awareness about the importance of organ donation.
Bucklin served on the Ethics Committee of UNOS for a dozen
years.
Ethics,
law, and medicine are all involved in this corporation's setting of national
priorities, hospital and medical regulations and policies. UNOS is the
federal contractor running the Congressional mandated national Organ
Procurement Transplant Network, (OPTN). UNOS and the OPTN must balance a
multitude of factors and competing interests of the average 85,000 persons
awaiting life-saving organs every day (when only about 25,000 organs are
available during a year).
Every day the OPTN operations center makes individual
allocations and arrangements for securing tens of thousands of organs, transporting them, and
providing to which transplant center and patient to whom they are allocated.
The OPTN mandates standards for organ transplantation professionals and
hospitals and audits for the Government the performance of the over 400
organizations across the country involved in transplantation.
Read summary of the article on medical ethics, mentioned by Life
Source in its above letter. Bucklin's article impacted organ transplantation practices which have now
changed as he advocated.
Or you can download the entire article, which was
solicited by the Social Sciences Research Network, for republication there, in
PDF format, at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=362920
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