Hmm, that doesn’t mesh with what he’s saying, does it? My first thought was that perhaps Indiana and California have different rules, however, I don’t think that’s likely as I’m pretty sure the organ donor list is nationwide.
As John Mace pointed out, it probably has something to do with whether or not the transplant will kill the donor. And someone else mentioned bone marrow; IANADr, but I wouldn’t consider bone marrow to be an organ. Also, it seems likely that receiving an entire liver would be better than getting just one lobe, and increase chances for survival (at least in adults, YMMV in children.)
OK. Can’t he just donate up to half of his liver prior to execution, per the normal protocols for living donors? It only takes about a third of a healthy liver to keep someone alive, and usually some 40-50% of the organ is removed for engraftment, leaving him liver to spare. Maybe it’s better to get a whole liver or something, but I can’t understand why this isn’t being discussed. If you can’t use a liver that’s been exposed to drugs, just take some of it before-hand. I can’t imagine there would be an ethical debate then. What gives?
I’m curious how long can someone actually live without any liver at all?
If this guy had his liver removed in the prison, is rolled down the hall and inejected, I think everything would work out, although I guess there is still the medical ethics problem with completely removing an organ you cannot live without.
Well, acute liver failure (the closest thing I can think of to what you’re talking about) is deadly unless the patient either recovers spontaneously, or gets a transplant double-quick. I think acute loss of liver function leads to CNS damage due to edema, and multi-organ failure pretty quickly. To remove a liver is to execute, and I can’t imagine there’s any ethical way to circumvent that fact.
Heh- yeah, that’s been suggested. However, apparently then they would have to wait to execute him, because he wouldn’t be “healthy enough” to be exectued. :rolleyes: Seriously.
And the time frames for executions are pretty rigid, so it would require intervention from the governor for that to happen.
I think the whole thing is silly. From this article:
*But Otis, a former waitress, should have no trouble finding a donor organ and may be better off without taking part of her brother’s liver, said Dr. Joseph Tector, director of transplantation at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis.
“If this were my sister and I could give part of my liver to her, I still would rather that she got a whole organ, because it’s a better graft,” Tector said.
“It will give her better function, with a better long-term result.” *
Why not harvest organs from all condemned criminals? Dio, you’ve surely read your Larry Niven. He explored this idea and postulated a near-future society in which we’re so wedded to obtaining transplant organs in the interests of staying fit and healthy forever that not only do we do exactly this, but the death penalty is… disturbingly common. :dubious:
And we don’t have a Vandervecken living out in the cometary halo to come up with any super-prosthetic alternatives, either.
Malacandra:He explored this idea and postulated a near-future society in which we’re so wedded to obtaining transplant organs in the interests of staying fit and healthy forever that not only do we do exactly this, but the death penalty is… disturbingly common.
In fairness to Mantle, are you saying that because he’s Mickey Mantle that his medical condition could not possibly warrant his receiving an organ on its own merit? As I understood, the Mick was quite sick indeed before he got his transplant. A lot of people didn’t like him getting it because of his past alcoholism, but if one accepts alcoholism as a disease like any other that argument doesn’t hold up.
That question is irrelevant. The victim is dead and nothing that can be done now can change that. The question is should we make some use of the murderer’s organs? The living innocent party, the recipient, is who we should try to help.
How long has this guy been on death row, and how long has his sister been in liver failure?
It strikes me as possible, at least, that his lawyers are trying to stir up a controversey simply in order to delay the execution. Perhaps it is not as unselfish as his sister claims.
Anyway, I don’t see a problem with anesthetizing him to the same level he would be for other liver surgery, remove the liver, and then start another IV and finish him off. A tech can do the second IV, if the doctors are so damn squeamish. He’s already consented, although he should not be allowed to designate a donee.
Someone else gets a liver they can use, and the rest of us are rid of this person. A win-win situation.
Since it seems that there are no shortages of livers (average waiting period 20 days was cited above), his sister is not dependent on a close tissue match, doctors wouldn’t give his sister his liver, and doctors would ethically refuse to remove a healthy liver from a healthy donor even if they suspected he were likely to be executed very soon after donation, there are no compelling reasons to delay the execution. His sister’s life won’t be saved by his donation. If we are to remove the organs of people condemned to death that should be a matter for public policy debate, not done ad hoc.
I’m pretty sure what he means is that nobody will touch a liver from a person who has been executed by lethal injection (I’m assume the chair is right out). The donor has to be “perfect”, apparently. How, under the inmate’s circumstances, to extract his liver while he is in a suitable condition to be a candidate donor? Short of taking it out of him while still alive and healthy, which will surely kill him, there is no way. To deliberately kill someone for their liver, even if they’re as good as dead anyhow, rather violates the whole “do no harm” principle rather badly. It makes the doctor the executioner.
I can only speculate that a whole liver from somebody else is far better than a partial liver from the inmate, so that’s a non-starter too, based on the above.
I still think the liver would probably be OK if taken quickly after death is declared, but I know basically squat about this stuff at the nitty-gritty level in humans.
The point (IIRC, it was a long time ago) is that other alcoholics are routinely denied livers, while Mantle was given one.
Whether or not giving livers to alcoholics is good policy is a seperate debate. I know I would be pretty pissed if my loved one died because they gave a liver to someone who they knew was probably going to drown it in alcohol within the year. On the other hand, if my relative were the alcoholic I would probably feel differently.
Seems like a crazy policy, if true. People who wreck their livers by suffering from one disease, alcoholism, are denied organs because of the stigma of their disease? I don’t want to hijack this any further and perhaps it warrants a thread of its own, but it doens’t make sense.
