The ethics of organ transplantation appears to present interesting aspects not to be readily found in those of other therapeutic interventions in medical practice. These aspects are worth considering not only from a purely moral point of view or so far as moral philosphy is concerned, but also from the viewpoint of epistemology or definitional operations in biomedicine. At the root of this different state of affairs we find the existence and direct involvement of a second person, the donor, whereas in the common medical practice the physician meets, as a rule, a single individual towards whom he/she is essentially responsible. (Pregnancy and birth may be considered as an evidently exceptional situation). While, on the one hand, the ethical relationship involves three individuals in organ transplantation, on the other hand the definition (and criteria, as the case may be) of an in principle irreversible biological situation, namely death, has recently been revised in consideration of another person. This, ...