Organ donor intervention trials and the ethical challenge of bystander organ recipients.

Donor intervention trials test treatments aimed at preserving organs in transplantation. Many such trials apply treatments to deceased organ donors before transplantation. Drawing on a recent National Academy of Medicine report, this review describes how such studies implicate the welfare of at least four different types of individuals who would not be considered human subjects under current regulations. I close by describing why protections of some sort ought to be extended to each of these four types of research bystanders.