Dr. Jeffrey Kahn on the ethics of a new organ transplant technique, 3-parent IVF, medical research cuts

It’s Midday on Ethics. Dr. Jeffrey Kahn is the director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. In addition to directing the Berman Institute, Dr. Kahn teaches in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Jeff Kahn joins us from time to time to talk about some of the thorny ethical issues facing scientists and people throughout society. We begin today with a conversation about organ donation. Nearly 105,000 people are on waiting lists for organs. The United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS, which manages part of the U.S. transplant system, reports that on average, 13 people die each day while waiting for a transplant. So the demand for organs is strong. With the advent of new surgical techniques for improving the viability of donor organs, however, some truly frightening problems have arisen while organs are being harvested.