• Francesca Bosisio, Marie Santiago, and Lazare Benaroyo.
• Interdisciplinary Ethics Unit (Ethos), Health Psychology Research Centre (CerPSa), Quartier UNIL Sorge, Amphipôle, Bureau 211, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. francesca.bosisio@unil.ch
• Swiss Med Wkly. 2011 Jan 1;141:w13312.

BackgroundWith the increase of the organ shortage, several authors assume that financial incentives would improve organ donation rates and fill the unbalance between the demand and the organs available for transplant medicine. This line of argument has been criticised with people arguing that an exchange of money for organs would violate the legal and the ethical principle of gratuity, decrease voluntarism and increase the body parts commodification phenomena.PurposeSwitzerland is often highlighted as having under-average organ donation rates compared to other European countries. In this paper we investigate the opinions of the Vaud French-speaking population concerning direct, indirect and non financial incentives in order to assess their opinions and anticipate the further debate.MethodsAs part of a broad survey about the organ donation decision-making process, questions about incentives for both living and deceased organ donation were addressed to Vaud inhabitants and physicians.ResultsThe data collected showed that respondents were opposed to rewarding both living and deceased organ donation. The analysis of positive answers showed that indirect and non financial incentives were the most likely choice to acknowledge the donor's act. People in critical financial situations preferred direct financial incentives.ConclusionsThese results showed that altruism and gratuity were key-values in the organ donation and transplantation social perceptions of the respondents. Thus, we assume that introducing financial incentives could tarnish the image of transplant medicine. Nevertheless, further studies are needed to evaluate if their introduction would improve the organ donation rates or decrease voluntarism.

18 keywords...

hide…