Abstract
Liver transplantation is one of the most spectacular of surgical achievements. It is a demanding and expensive procedure, requiring great surgical skill and a great depth of supporting services. Precisely because it is a procedure at the leading edge of medicine, more and more units in developed countries are pressing to be allowed to carry it out. But there are many moral and ethical problems, some of which can be usefully examined using a "Mozart model" as proposed by Starzl.