Abstract

Doctors at four German hospitals have been suspended from their posts following internal investigations which alleged that they had been manipulating the organ transplant allocation system in order to help their patients get donor livers more quickly. It is alleged that doctors exaggerated the severity of their patients’ conditions so that they would be accorded higher priority for receiving organs, but there may also have been manipulation of medical records, deception of patients and potential harm to patients both within Germany and across the EU. There has been significant public reaction to these events. The reported events require analysis as there may be several lessons for the UK context; doing so requires analyzing the alleged events in terms of the issues raised in a hypothetical manner.