I had me this here idea some time ago, inspired by a condemned murderer who wished his death would bring back the person or persons he’d killed. He appeared to be quite remorseful and wished he could somehow undo what he’d done (so he said.)
So I got to thinking – what if a condemned murderer was given the choice of donating organs? The convict would be anesthetized and put on life support, all transplantable organs would be harvested, then he/she would be taken off of life support, supposedly to die instantly when the machines were turned off.
Is this in any way feasible? Legal? Medically doable? Somewhat less than barbaric?
I think it creates an incentive for abuse by the state and the medical industry. I’m sure no one would start out with the intent to abuse, but when one’s own loved ones are dying, the pull would become overwhelming – don’t people always say they’d do ANYTHING to save their loved ones? – and rationalization is so easy.
Larry Niven wrote a whole series of stories in which transplanting organs became so easy that it was abused – legislation started increasing the number of crimes for which the penalty was death, just so there’d be more of a supply of organs. I’m not saying it would happen, but I could see it as a possibility.
Some other real world problems: many condemned felons are not whom you’d want to consider getting spare parts from. Histories of drug abuse, and developmental effects of long-term poverty can make such organs less than ideal.
Fighting ignorance - this isn’t simply fiction, I don’t think. There are persistent stories about China getting donor tissue/organs from condemned felons.
I remember reading in Harper’s (?) about Iraq using political prisoners for their blood during Saddam’s regime. They’d basically bleed them to death slowly over days.
Anyone who donated organs this way would have to do more than just volunteer, I would think. there may even have to be something of a court test to make sure they’re fit, that there isn’t any abuse, there is a need for what they can donate and so on. There would be a requirement for the inmate to keep himself/herself healthy, that recipients would never know where the organs came from and so on.
Something I forgot to include in my OP – at heart, I’m anti-capital punishment (so I call myself a pro-lifer). So I have to agree with alphaboi867 that any death penalty is, frankly, barbaric and uncivilized. And obviously we can’t’ harvest organs from criminals who have been executed with any of the existing methods – the tissues are either too damaged or poisoned to be useful. The actual harvesting would most likely be fatal, as the usual methods of keeping a transplant patient alive would simply be withheld, or if the heart couldn’t be harvested, additional poison would be administered after viable organs had been removed.
On the one hand, the idea sounds so noble; on the other hand, the practice sounds so ghoulish!
I’m with alphaboi. Sure, I don’t really like the DP, and using organ harvest from felons creates incentives to increase the DP, but it’s not worse than the DP in the first place, morally. After you die you’re just parts.
But who would harvest the organs? I doubt you would find any doctors willing to perform such surgeries. That’s a big problem already with lethal injections: no medical people are willing to do it, so it’s done by people with no medical training, and they don’t always do it right.
Ideally, a sentence of death should result (after appeals, etc.) in a quick and painless death. Harvesting organs from an otherwise healthy person turns surgeons into butchers. I’m not opposed to their bodies being donated to science after they’re dead. I think there’s a fine line with the DP anyway, and this would definitely cross that line for me.
For a start, many death row criminals are drug addicts, whose organs are not expected to be in good health. They may be carriers of HIV or hepatitis or the drugs have ruined them. Generally not a good idea to transplant them.
It would certainly be against medical ethics to harvest their organs while still alive. Any doctor doing so would be struck off.
Well, again, screening would take care of the first problem. I can’t imagine that anyone so wrecked by drugs and disease would be inclinded to volunteer as an organ donor, and even if they were, screening would eliminate them.
The medical ethics, however, may be the fatal flaw in the idea. The only consolation doctors would have would be the ability to save another life, since the person from whom the organs are being taken is doomed anyway. But I can certainly understand and respect a physician taking the attitude, “Go ahead and kill him if you think you have to, but I want no part of it.”
Well, I disagree. I, too, am against the death penalty as many others are, but execution by itself carries no incentive. If executions are worked out so as to have some benefit (other than a psychological one that you get from killing someone who has broken the law), then there becomes a small incentive to carry it out. That incentive, however small it is, could affect the possible outcome of sentencing decisions, etc, and I think that is inherently worse than executions alone, because it could result in MORE executions.
I can’t see it being particularly viable. In a previous GQ thread, someone posted cites saying that the NIH says only 50% of people are eligible to donate blood (and one of the questions that makes you inelligbile is “Have you ever been to prison?”)
Given the relatively small niumber of people on death row, and the much greater likelihood that due to lifestyle (either before prison or during incarceration) a death row inmate would likely fail even the most basic elligibility requirements, I can’t imagine it would be worthwhile to set up an organ donor program for inmates.
There was a case a few years ago in which a condemned man wished to donate his liver to his sister, and was refused, for a variety of reasons. Here’s a link: