Four areas of influence of transplant therapy. The current state and future prospects

Abstract

The appearance and development of transplant surgery have started and intensified the process of changing our sense of morality and the understanding of our humanity. The article discusses four areas where the above mentioned process takes place and, undoubtedly, where it will become intensified: medical, anthropological, ethical, and socio-legal. It is shown that human corporeality is not considered to be an important element of human existence, but that it has become only a very useful item, a material carrier of our lives and after death a valuable reservoir of spare parts. The sense of the externality of the body in relation to man has become more widespread, i.e. looking from another perspective, the sense that only the sphere of human consciousness, without corporeality, determines humanity. However, this peculiar depreciation and utilitarian treatment of the body is not connected with the revaluation of human spirituality. In consequence, earthly life becomes the highest value and any activities aiming at the preservation, prolongation, and improvement of the quality of life are attributed a moral character. Due to its social character, transplant surgery consolidates such attitudes. In the ethical sphere it results in the domination of the utilitarian understanding of morality – what increases the overall good is moral. Thus, it appears that although transplant surgery is only a temporary stage in the development of medicine, the utilitarian moral attitude which it fosters will become dominant and will replace the deontological understanding of morality.