Organ Transplantation: Medical, Tehcnological and Ethical Challenges

Date: 

Friday, May 20, 2016, 12:30pm to 1:30pm

Location: 

Webcast: ForumHSPH.org

The Dr. Lawrence H. and Roberta Cohn Forums

Presented in Collaboration with The Huffington Post and in Association with Harvard Health Publications

People die each day waiting on lists for lifesaving organs, and the rise of chronic diseases such as diabetes only increases the demand. With the need for scientific innovation and donor support becoming ever more critical, this Forum will explore biomedical advances that promise to address the scarcity, as well as the efforts of medical leaders, advocates and policymakers to reduce the numbers waiting for transplants. Through 3-D printing, scaffolding, chips and other innovations, scientists have made extraordinary strides in tissue engineering and developing artificial organs. This program will look at the potential of advances like these, along with the ongoing role of current donation programs; ethics of matching and allocation policies; controversies around buying and selling organs; and approaches such as “presumed consent”, used in some countries to increase supply, where patients are presumed to have given permission to donate their organs, unless they have explicitly opted out.

EXPERT PARTICIPANTS

Francis Delmonico, Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital Transplant Center; Immediate Past President, The Transplantation Society; Chief Medical Officer, New England Organ Bank; Advisor for Human Organ Transplantation, World Health Organization; former President, United Network for Organ Sharing

Daniel Wikler, Professor of Ethics and Population Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Doris Taylor, Director, Regenerative Medicine Research and Director, Center for Cell and Organ Biotechnology, Texas Heart Institute; Adjunct Professor, College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences at Texas A&M University

MODERATOR

David Freeman, Managing Editor, Impact & Innovation, The Huffington Post

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Send our panelists questions in advance to theforum@hsph.harvard.edu
We'll be conducting a live chat on The Forum's  Organ Transplantation web page.
Tweet us @ForumHSPH #organtransplant