Don du sang, transfusion et anonymat

[Does ethics of donation apply equally to all elements of the human body?]

The therapeutic use of elements and products of the human body has always raised serious questions about the balance to be respected between a duty to protect donors and a compelling therapeutic purpose for a patient. Our body is part of a relationship of otherness, since it embodies the person, a relationship that is sometimes therapeutic, for oneself or for others. As an object of gift, the body requires protection. However, if ethics of donation is based on common axiological and protective elements, the field of donation of human body parts is vast and evolving. Each type of donation has its own specificity and its own references, which requires pragmatism, collective reflection, in which everybody should be able to participate in an informed manner.

[The limits of a principlist approach in the ethics of donation of elements and products of the human body. About some examples]

Voluntary, non-remunerated donations are fundamental principles with anonymity regarding donations of elements and products of the human body in France. Blood donation was a model to organize donation of organs, hematopoietic stem cell or gamete. These principles, which at first glance appear to be intangible, commonly accepted and transposable between the different types of donation, though reveal singularities regarding to a collective imagination, a biological reality, evolution of society, medicine and science. Through the study of these different principles applied to donated human body parts, this article aims to highlight the ethical limitations of a single principlist approach. The notions of anonymity, consent, voluntariness, non for profit, under their universal aknowledge, reveal variability of interpretation and scope due to the heterogeneous characteristics, implications and purposes between these donations of different elements and the uses made of them.