Prisoners donating organs to get time off raises thorny ethical questions

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Maruf Hassan
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Prisoners donating organs to get time off raises thorny ethical questions

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In January 2023 two Democratic representatives, Judith Garcia and Carlos Gonzalez, proposed a bill that would offer prisoners in Massachusetts a new way to win reduction in their sentences: by donating their bone marrow or vital organs. The bill stated that the commissioner of the Department of Corrections should establish both a bone marrow and organ donation program within the department and a committee focused on bone marrow and organ donation that would set eligibility standards for inmates interested in the program. While forbidding commissions or monetary payments for donors, it stated that prisoners could “gain not less than 60 and not more than 365 day reduction in the length of their committed sentence” if they donated bone marrow or an organ.

The legislators claimed that their proposal would respect the bodily autonomy of incarcerated people by letting them decide what to do with their vital organs. It also would address racial disparities by helping to expand the pool of donors. Recently, however, Garcia and Gonzalez have walked back their proposal and are planning to introduce a version without the promise Job Function Email List of a sentence reduction. Still, the idea of giving sentence reductions in return for organ donation raises serious ethical issues. As someone who has studied punishment and imprisonment, including the conditions of confinement in American prisons, I’m aware that some states have allowed prisoners to donate organs without any external incentives. But the question is whether prison inmates can ever consent freely to organ donation.

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The history of organ donation The idea of transplanting organs as a medical cure is quite old. In 600 B.C., skin flaps were used for replacing missing noses, and 16th -century surgeons considered taking grafts of a patient’s tissue for another patient. But the practice of organ donation and transplantation began in earnest only in 1954, when Joseph Murray carried out the first successful kidney transplant. Other donated organs, including livers and hearts, were transplanted a decade later. However, it has always been an ethically fraught area, as the need for donated organs far outstrips the supply.
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