Understanding Organ Stewardship

Abstract

I present a bipartite model of organ stewardship that places it at the intersection of resource stewardship and gift stewardship. Though both forms of stewardship are grounded in relationships of trust, they are importantly distinct, as are the duties they confer. This bipartite model of organ stewardship functions as a beneficial instrument for understanding and resolving conflicts among transplant stakeholders. As proof of concept, I apply the bipartite model of organ stewardship to a controversial case of conditional organ donation, showing that we can better understand the underlying moral conflict if we recognize that it involves a tension between resource and gift stewardship. Then, demonstrating that the model can do more than just explanatory work, I use it to resolve the long-standing debate over whether organ transplant recipients are organ stewards. Although some transplant recipients are gift stewards, I argue, none are resource stewards, and they therefore do not owe anything to members of the transplant team.