Time Off For A Good Kidney ?

On the one hand trading a body part to get time
knocked off of ones sentence is a novel idea. After
all many of the people that are locked up abuse
their bodies anyway with alcohol and drugs. On
the other hand though many would be more than
willing to give up a body part for their freedom and
most would be doing it out of duress. So the ethics come
into play and then what about future medical expenses
for those that give up say a kidney and down the road
the remaining kidney goes bad. These are just a couple
of obstacles that have to be overcome before this law
sees the light of reality. What do you think? I'd like to
hear from you.


Prison inmates in South Carolina could get up to six months shaved off their sentences if they donated a kidney or their bone marrow, under a proposed bill before the state Senate. "We have a lot of people dying as they wait for organs, so I thought about the prison population," said state Sen. Ralph Anderson, the bill's main sponsor. "I believe we have to do something to motivate them. If they get some good time off, if they get out early, that's motivation."

The proposal was approved Thursday by the Senate Corrections and Penology Subcommittee. But it is almost certain to prompt fierce opposition from legal experts and prisoner rights advocates about whether inmates are able to make such a decision freely."For a prisoner to actually have a benefit for giving up an organ violates every ethical value I'm aware of," said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center and chairman of the Institute of Medicine's committee on human subject research in prisoners.

"It's grossly unethical, if not unlawful," he said. The institute is part of the National Academy of Sciences.Legislators said they would not debate the measure until they established whether exchanging prison time for body parts violates federal law. Under current law, it is illegal to exchange an organ for "valuable consideration." Lawmakers are attempting to determine whether a reduced sentence constitutes a consideration.




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Posted by iloveeur at 12:11 PM 0 comments