Introduction: Organ Transplantation—A Challenge for Global Ethics

A social scientific interpretation of the development of global ethics is offered. Both spontaneous and intended mechanisms of the construction of such an ethics within the broader processes of globalization are analyzed, and possible theoretical foundations are suggested. The scientific and technological achievements that gave rise to the medical procedure of organ transplantation generated new questions and challenges that theologians, scholars of religion, natural scientists, and social scientists are now trying to resolve.