A paired organ is an organ present twice in the human body, whose unilateral removal allows the donating person to go on living. Examples: kidney and lung.
Paired organs thus permit living organ donation — the ethically less problematic form of organ donation, because there is no tension with the Dead Donor Rule: the donor is alive during and after the donation.
Concrete paired organs
Kidney — the most frequent form of living donation worldwide. One kidney suffices for the donating person; the donor mortality risk is about 0.03 percent.
Lung — living donation of a lung lobe (lobus) is possible. The removed portion does not regenerate, but is functionally compensated by the remaining lung. Complete lung donation (both lungs) is possible only post mortem.
Ethical significance of the differentiation
The classification paired versus unpaired (unpaired) is not merely medically descriptive, but ethically and substance-ontologically load-bearing:
- For paired organs, living donation is a morally less problematic alternative to postmortem donation. It satisfies the principle of totality (Pius XII, 1956): the part is ordered to the whole, yet the person may sacrifice a part for the benefit of another person, provided no serious functional impairment follows.
- For unpaired organs, this alternative is structurally excluded — the entire ethical burden falls on postmortem donation and thus on the question of whether death was determined with certainty.
The DCD permanence tension is thereby distributed asymmetrically: it is avoidable in donation after circulatory death of paired organs (living donation available), and unavoidable in DCD of unpaired organs (esp. the heart).
Magisterial support
John Paul II, in his address before the 18th International Congress of the Transplantation Society (Rome, 29 August 2000), anchored the paired/unpaired differentiation magisterially:
“Vital organs which occur singly in the body can be removed only after death, that is from the body of someone who is certainly dead.”
Conversely: vital organs that are present in pairs may also be donated during life — according to the principle of totality.
Ontological classification
Superordinate concept: Donor Organ
Ontological relations:
- permits: living organ donation
- disjoint with: Unpaired Organ
- grounded by: principle of totality
- concrete examples: kidney, lung
Chapter assignment: Chapter 4: What Is Human Personhood? (German)
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Pius XII (1956): address to the Italian Society of Anesthesiology on the moral questions of medical intervention (principle of totality). Georgetown University Library Repository. https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/762162
- John Paul II (2000): Address to the 18th International Congress of the Transplantation Society, Rome, 29 August 2000. https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/2000/jul-sep/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20000829_transplants.html
- UNOS: Living Donation Facts. https://unos.org/transplant/living-donation/
- Reese, Peter P.; Boudville, Neil & Garg, Amit X. (2015): Living kidney donation: outcomes, ethics, and uncertainty. The Lancet 385(9981): 2003—2013.
See also
- Unpaired Organ
- Living Organ Donation
- Principle of Totality
- Donation after Circulatory Death
- Dead Donor Rule
- Pius XII
- John Paul II
Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.