Organ Transplants and the Question of Death

Transplanting organs required solving surgical, biological and ethical problems. On 23 December 1954 in Boston, Joseph Murray's team performed the first successful kidney transplant between identical twins, avoiding rejection because their tissues matched. On 3 December 1967 in Cape Town, Christiaan Barnard performed the first human heart transplant; the patient, Louis Washkansky, lived 18 days.

Rejection by the immune system limited early success until drugs such as ciclosporin, approved in the early 1980s, improved survival. Transplants raised hard ethical questions: when is a donor truly dead, who receives scarce organs, and how can trafficking be prevented? In 1968 a Harvard committee proposed criteria for 'brain death', which shaped later laws. Countries continue to debate consent systems, such as opt-in and opt-out donation, showing how medical technology forces societies to make new moral decisions.