According to Glannon and Ross, for an act to be considered
altruistic, it cannot be obligatory nor motivated by expectation of
self-reward. Given that parents are obligated to help their children
and stand to benefit greatly from donating, the authors conclude that
parent to child organ donation is not altruistic. Are they correct? I
am not sure. In my view, this is a semantic question and the answer
depends upon how one defines altruism. Altruism is a complex subject
that means different things to different people. If we say that an
altruistic act is one that is performed voluntarily, is risky or costly
to the actor, and is designed only to benefit others with no
expectation of self-reward, then it may be difficult or impossible to
identify any such acts. When one risks her own life to save a stranger,
others may ask: “Did she really act solely to benefit another or
was she motivated, at least in part, by a need to satisfy her
conscience or a desire to feel good about herself?” This question
is relevant to the motivation of living organ donors. In contrast to
the authors' answer that strangers who donate organs do so only
out of concern for other people, Carl Fellner argued that many living
organ donors, even those who are not related to their recipients, act
to benefit themselves. If Fellner is correct, and if organ donation by
parents is not altruistic because of the possibility of self-reward,
perhaps the same is true of organ donation by strangers.