Mrs. X and the Bone Marrow Transplant

The case is presented in which a leukemia patient sought an order from an Iowa district court to compel the University of Iowa Institutional Review Board (IRB) to recontact, specifically on the patient's behalf, a potential bone marrow donor who had refused a general request to participate in the transplant program. Charles Lidz, Alan Meisel, and Loren Roth argue against judicial intervention, primarily on the grounds that a follow-up letter would constitute undue pressure on the potential donor. David Zimmerman agrees that it would be wrong for the ethics committee to recontact the potential donor, but bases his argument on a balancing of probable risks and benefits in the case at hand rather than on the issue of rights or coercion in informed consent

Alternative medicine · Argument (complex analysis · Bone marrow · Bone marrow transplant · Bone marrow transplantation · Coercion (linguistics · Informed consent · Intervention (counseling · Pathology · Political science · Psychiatry · Ethics and Legal Issues in Pediatric Healthcare · Ethics in medical practice · Law · Medicine · Patient Dignity and Privacy · Philosophy · Immunology · Internal Medicine