Guest Post by Bram Wispelwey, Ari Zivotofsky, and Alan Jotkowitz

Much has been made of the fact that over the last two decades HIV has transformed from an inevitable, agonising killer into a controllable chronic disease.  But have we reached a point where infecting someone with HIV in order to avoid other, potentially worse health outcomes might be justified?  In the realm of organ transplantation we found that if we are not yet there, perhaps we should be.

Our paper was in part inspired by what many considered a shocking ruling by former Israeli Chief Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron, who decreed that it was consistent with Jewish religious law for HIV-negative individuals to receive HIV-positive organ transplants, even if the evidence indicates a possibility for the recipient to contract the disease.  Many considered this opinion premature because only recently had HIV-positive individuals been found to be good candidates for solid organ transplantation, and doctors in South Africa were still in the early research stages of examining kidney transplantation between HIV-positive individuals.  But in examining the ethical considerations of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice, we argue in our paper that Rabbi Bakshi-Doron’s opinion is ethically sound.

Focusing on the history of HIV in transplantation and using a comparison to current practice with regard to another infectious disease, cytomegalovirus, we demonstrate that disallowing HIV-negative candidates from receiving HIV-positive organs would be a significant limit on patient autonomy.  The elimination of the ban on this type of potentially life-saving (and improving) donation may also represent a more socially just option, as it would expand the donor pool and engender cost savings. HIV-positive to HIV-positive donation will soon be a reality in several countries; it’s time to think about going one step further.

Read the full paper here.