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What Would You Do If You Were Asked To Play God?
In 1961, the Swedish Hospital of Seattle created a committee called the Admission and Policy Committee of the Seattle Artificial Kidney Center at the Swedish Hospital to decide which patients would receive a new lifesaving procedure. Because the decisions of this seven-member committee, which was composed of regular citizens, ultimately determined who would live and who would die, the committee became known as the “God Committee”. Soon after the Swedish Hospital formed their “God Committee”, hospitals across the country formed similar committees to determine the fates of their terminally ill patients. But should regular citizens be tasked with determining who lives and who dies?
In the case of the Swedish Hospital, their God Committee was deciding on dialysis treatment, which was new at the time. When government funding for dialysis treatment became available, the need for God Committees became obsolete. Or did they?
Let’s consider organ donation. Annually, there are more than 100,000 people in need of an organ transplant. Transplant hospitals work with the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) and the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) to register patients to donate and receive organs. After health screenings, potential donors and recipients are places in a computer system and matches are made based on several factors including organ availability, time spent on the transplant list, and the location of the organ with respect to the recipient. For certain organs, a recipient may need someone to die for their necessary organ to become available. In these cases, the same computer system is used, but it may also be necessary for the hospital ethics/transplant committee to become involved. This is the ethical dilemma that we will explore in the class final project.
For this project, we will watch a movie that examines a decision that a fictional God Committee must make. The movie is The God Committee. After watching the movie, complete parts I, II, and III of the assignment.
Part I: God Committee Analysis
List and describe each of the members of The God Committee at the St. Augustine Hospital. What ethical dilemmas do they present throughout the film?
Part II: Patient Background Information
Identify the relevant patients The God Committee reviewed in 2014. For each patient, record the following information in the chart below (add additional charts if necessary):
Patient Name:
Patient Age:
Medical Condition (list what conditions the patient has)
Patient Preferences (what are the patient’s feelings/thoughts about receiving an organ)
Quality of Life (what is the patient’s life like? Do they have the support systems in place to help them recover?)
Contextual Features (what makes this patient a favorable candidate? What makes them a less deserving candidate?)
4-box evaluation method was developed by Jonsen et al. Clinical Ethics: A Practical Approach to Ethical Decisions in Clinical Medicine, 7th Ed. New York: McGraw Hill-Medical, 2010.
Part III: Ethical Questions
Answer the following questions. Each question must be answered in at least one paragraph (4-5 sentences per paragraph)
Consider Dr. Boxer’s health, and his awareness of his own condition. Do you believe that his knowledge of his inevitable fate affected the way he made decisions on the committee?
Thinking about how many more lives that could have been positively impacted, could Dr. Gilroy’s behavior and decisions be defendable?
When you are a parent, your main priority is usually the safety and health of your child. Thinking from this viewpoint, is the offer Emmitt Granger proposed so bad? If in his position, do you think that you too would have tried all options available to save your child’s life?
Note: The link to The God Committee movie takes you to a free version on Tubi. The movies can also be found on Netflix, Plex (free), and other streaming services (there may be a charge at these other sites).
References
Alexander, S. (1962, November, 9 ). They Decide Who Lives, Who Dies. Life Magazine, 102-125.
Jonsen AR. The god squad and the origins of transplantation ethics and policy. J Law Med Ethics. 2007 Summer; 35(2):238-40. doi: 10.1111/j.1748-720X.2007.00131.x. PMID: 17518848.
Jonsen, A, Siegler, M, Winslade, W. Clinical Ethics: A Practical Approach to Ethical Decisions in Clinical Medicine, 7th Ed. New York: McGraw Hill-Medical, 2010.
UNOS (United network for Organ Sharing) 2023. Information and data available on the UNOS website at: https://unos.org/. Accessed July 7, 2023.
Stark, A. (Director). (2021). The God Committee. [Movie; online movie]. Vertical Entertainment
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