Moral and Ethical Issues in Liver and Kidney Transplantation

The first successful kidney transplant was performed between monozygotic twins in Boston in 1954. Hardly a decade later, liver transplants were conducted to treat patients with chronic liver failure. In the short span of twenty years, most of the technical, surgical and immunologic hurdles to organ transplant­ation were removed. Currently, hepatic and renal transplants are commonly done as the treatments of choice for patients with liver and kidney failures respectively.(Schrier 1997, p.2480)