Organ Transplantation and the Gift Relationship

Organ donation is often portrayed as the ultimate example of gift giving or acting altruistically. This rhetoric is common in public awareness campaigns and professional guidance, and the idea of altruism implicitly shapes regulatory and legislative frameworks.

However, altruism as a guiding value has and continues to be open to criticism. It is sometimes described as poorly defined, and questions arise of whether a selfless act is truly possible.

The Centre for Health, Law and Society 2023 Symposium brings together a range of external and internal speakers with expertise in law, ethics, and medicine, and personal experience of donating or receiving organs, or working in transplant services.

Speakers will draw on a range of research projects to examine and reflect on the role of gift-giving and altruism in the organ donation and transplantation landscape.

Please register for this event via Ticketpass.

Symposium Programme:

• 09:00 - 09:15 Registration (in person)

• 09:20 - 09:30 Welcome and Introductions

PANEL 1 - Keynote (09:30 – 11:00)

• 09:30 – 10:00 Keynote: Jackie Leach Scully - The trouble with gifts: reasons to change the framing of organ donation

• 10:00 – 10:45 Responses and Discussion: Sally Sheldon, Antonia Cronin, Greg Moorlock

• 10:45 – 11:15 Coffee

PANEL 2 - Research Projects (11:30 – 13:15)

• 11:30 – 11:50 Bonnie Venter - I’m the problem, it’s me: has altruism become the anti-hero of living kidney donation?

• 11:50 – 12.10 Nizam Mamode - Donating a kidney to a stranger- is it a reasonable thing to do?

• 12.10 – 12:30 John Harrington - The Gift Relationship in a Devolved UK: Findings from an Empirical Study of Policy-Making and Legislation

• 12:30 – 13:15 Responses and Discussion: Lisa Burnapp, Frank Dor, Gurch Randhawa

• 13:15 Lunch