Massachusetts Bill allowing Prisoners to trade Organs for Reduced Sentences

The Bill

What would you give for your life?

What would you give for your freedom?

CO-SPONSORS
Carlos González, Democrat 10th District
Judith A. Garcia, Democrat 11th District
Shirley B. Arriaga, Democrat 8th District
Bud L. Williams, Democrat 11th District
Russell E. Holmes, Democrat 6th District

Would you let the government take your organs for a shorter sentence?

It’s unethical, it’s coercive, it’s a slippery slope to some Repo: the Genetic Opera horse-shit.
I'd expect this out of the Nat-C Fascist GOP, not the Democratic party for fucks-sake.

Massachusetts has some of the best doctors, nurses, hospitals. I can’t imagine they would find this ethical.

Organ donation is a huge process. You need to be medically evaluated as a match to the recipient but you also undergo testing to make sure you are physically and mentally capable of transplant. Part of that evaluation is a meeting with a mental health professional to glean of course if you’re capable of handling the post-transplant regimen but also to determine if there are strings attached to donation.

They will not push forward with a match where there is ethical ambiguity. I don’t see how this program would proceed past that stage because it is very much a transaction with strings attached.

If one wishes to increase the pool of available organs there are steps we can take like educating the general public about live donation, encouraging people to register as a donor, dispelling myths about transplant etc.

But probably the biggest thing we can do is challenge dialysis companies like DaVita and Fresenius - who lobby against bills that expand access to prescription drug coverage for transplant recipients.

These are for profit companies that make money by keeping people on dialysis, even when transplant is often the better path. They’ve lobbied against bills that would expand Medicare coverage of immunosuppressive drugs, which are required for the life of the transplant.

The number one cause of transplant rejection and return to dialysis is non-compliance - but this is usually due to patients not being able to afford medication.

You want the list to be shorter, the cost to tax payers to be less (Medicare funds dialysis) - you don’t grow the pool of available kidneys, you shrink the pool of who needs them by providing better support to transplant patients and stopping for profit dialysis companies from predatory practices (including advising dialysis as a long term solution to organ failure).

May reason rule.