Compare Traditions on One Technology
Choose a technology and read the traditions' recorded stances side by side — each with its rationale in its own terms. The comparison is the section's method in one view: the differences are in the reasons.
Organ transplantation
A near-consensus on the gift and commerce refused — and a live, published disagreement about the definition of death that transplantation forced every tradition to state. The full register entry
Buddhist
Selectively adopted
Compassion (karuṇā) commends the gift of the body — the Jātaka tales celebrate the Bodhisattva’s gift of his own flesh — while family-centered practice in East Asian Buddhist cultures long made cadaveric donation rare; the revival of donation in Taiwan was led by the Buddhist Tzu Chi movement, which reframed the body’s usefulness after death as the teaching’s fulfillment.
- Tzu Chi Foundation, body-donation program records
Catholic
Regulated
Donation is praised as an act of love and solidarity (Evangelium vitae, §86; John Paul II’s 2000 address), conditioned on the donor’s certain death and free consent; the Church accepts the neurological criterion applied with rigor while continuing to examine its philosophical edges, and refuses organ commerce absolutely.
- John Paul II, Evangelium vitae (1995), §86
Islamic
Regulated
Fiqh academies permit transplantation under conditions — necessity, donor consent, no sale — with the Islamic Fiqh Academy’s resolutions of the 1980s as the standard texts; the body as God’s trust (amāna) generates both the permission and its limits.
- Islamic Fiqh Academy, resolutions on organ transplantation (1986–1988)
Jewish
Contested within the tradition
Transplantation is permitted and often praised under pikuach nefesh, but the definition of death divides the authorities: many Orthodox rabbis accept brain-stem death, a significant minority requires cardiac criteria, and the argument is conducted in published responsa — the register’s clearest specimen of a tradition reasoning in the open.
- Rabbinical Council of America, policy discussions on brain death (1991–2010)
Sikh
Embraced
Donation is framed and promoted as sevā — selfless service — by Sikh organizations and gurdwaras; the tradition has no doctrine of bodily resurrection to complicate the gift, and its authorities encourage registration as donors.
- Sikh community organ-donation campaigns (UK and Canada)