Moral rationality and practical effectiveness of prioritized incentives for organ donor families

In 2024, the Regulations on Human Organ Donation and Transplantation, which came into force in China, introduced a new norm recognizing the prioritized rights and interests of close family members of organ donors in organ transplantation sorting. Based on the new regulations, the moral rationality and practical effectiveness issues of continued family prioritized incentives were explored. On the issue of moral rationality, this paper first analyzed the fairness and altruism issues of family prioritized incentives, as well as pointed out that the moral basis of family prioritized incentives in China should rely on Confucianism’s familism. Confucian ethics can provide sufficient ethical defense for this incentive measure. On the issue of practical effectiveness, this paper reviewed the empirical studies carried out in the previous period and analyzed the experiences of Israel and Japan. Thus, three improvement suggestions were proposed to promote practical effectiveness at the current stage, including consistent expression at the legal level, strengthening the content of bioethics and family ethics at the level of social education, emphasizing informed consent at the clinical level, and specifically requiring organ donation coordinators to express family priority incentives more cautiously.