{"id":977670,"date":"2023-02-01T12:36:46","date_gmt":"2023-02-01T12:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2023\/02\/massachusetts-democrats-prisoner-organ-bone-marrow-donation\/"},"modified":"2023-02-01T12:36:46","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T12:36:46","slug":"a-gruesome-bill-asks-prisoners-to-give-up-organs-to-get-out-a-few-months-early","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/02\/01\/a-gruesome-bill-asks-prisoners-to-give-up-organs-to-get-out-a-few-months-early\/","title":{"rendered":"A Gruesome Bill Asks Prisoners to Give Up Organs to Get Out a Few Months Early"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prisoners in Massachusetts may soon be forced to choose between their organs and their freedom: Democratic legislators in the state are proposing a law that would allow prisoners to donate organs or bone marrow in exchange for up to a year off their sentence.<\/h3>\n\n
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\n A proposed Massachusetts law would allow prisoners to receive sentence reductions between two months and a year for donating organs or bone marrow. (Harold M. Lambert \/ Getty Images)
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Massachusetts Democrats have a bold new proposal for prisoners: donate your organs or bone marrow, and get as little as a couple of months off of your sentence. The legislation, which has attracted five cosponsors in the state house, raises major bioethical concerns for the six-thousand-plus people<\/a> currently held in the Bay State\u2019s prisons. In essence, the bill would ask prisoners which is more important to them: their freedom, or their organs and bone marrow.<\/p>\n

The bill appears to go significantly beyond other organ-donation policies for prisoners. The Federal Bureau of Prisons says that prisoners may\u00a0donate<\/a> their organs while incarcerated, but only to immediate family members. In 2013, the State of Utah\u00a0allowed<\/a>\u00a0organ donation from prisoners who died while being incarcerated. Most other states do not allow organ donations from prisoners at all.<\/p>\n

The Ethics Committee of the United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit that administers organ transplants in the United States, has\u00a0panned<\/a> proposals like the Massachusetts bill. \u201cAny law or proposal that allows a person to trade an organ for a reduction in sentence . . . raises numerous issues,\u201d the committee says in a position statement on their website.<\/p>\n

The legislation,\u00a0HD 3822<\/a>, states:<\/p>\n

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The Bone Marrow and Organ Donation Program shall allow eligible incarcerated individuals to gain not less than 60 and not more than 365 day reduction in the length of their committed sentence in [prison], on the condition that the incarcerated individual has donated bone marrow or organ(s).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A five-member \u201cBone Marrow and Organ Donation Committee,\u201d only one of whom is designated to be a prisoners\u2019 rights advocate, would decide how much time off prisoners would receive from donating organs.<\/p>\n

There is a long history in the medical field of doctors experimenting on and abusing prisoners, including in Massachusetts. While current rules prohibit the state Department of Corrections from \u201cthe use of an inmate(s) for medical, pharmaceutical, or cosmetic experiments,\u201d in 1942, a professor at Harvard Medical School\u00a0injected<\/a> sixty-four<\/a>\u00a0Massachusetts prisoners with cow\u2019s blood as part of World War II military research, killing one of the subjects.<\/p>\n

The current bill might not even be legal. According to a\u00a02007 ABC News report<\/a> on a similar proposal in South Carolina, \u201cIt’s probably going to be considered a violation of federal law. Congress passed the National Organ Transplant Act in 1984 that makes it a federal crime ‘to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human organ for valuable consideration for use in human transplantation.’ It is likely 180 days off a sentence could constitute \u2018valuable consideration.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The ABC News story noted another potential problem with the idea: prisoners have \u201ca much higher incidence of HIV, AIDS, Hepatitis, and even tuberculosis than the general population,\u201d so it might not be safe to use their organs in transplant procedures.<\/p>\n

The Massachusetts bill\u2019s two sponsors, Democratic state representatives Carlos Gonzalez of Springfield and Judith Garcia of Chelsea, did not respond to requests for comment. Gonzalez is the cochair of the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security, which has oversight over corrections in the state.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Corrections (DOC) said in a statement to us that \u201cThe DOC does not comment on pending legislation,\u201d adding: \u201cMy understanding is that the DOC did not meet with legislators regarding this bill.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Twitter, Garcia\u00a0said<\/a>, \u201cThere is currently no path to organ or bone marrow donation for incarcerated folks in MA \u2014 even for relatives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gonzalez, for his part, told\u00a0WHYN<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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I\u2019ve put more effort into this bill after visiting a friend, who I consider a brother, in the hospital who is required to have dialysis 3 to 4 times a week while he awaits a kidney transplant. He\u2019s a father of three children, and he is in stage 4 of kidney failure. . . . I love my friend and I\u2019m praying through this legislation we can extend the chances of life.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Gonzalez also noted to WHYN that there are significant racial disparities in who needs transplants, bolstering his case for the legislation.<\/p>\n

Prisoners\u2019 Legal Services of Massachusetts, which advocates on behalf of prisoners in the Bay State, told us that the organization is<\/p>\n

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in touch with the bill sponsors and [are] cognizant of the significant problem of racial inequity in our health system that has left BIPOC communities disproportionately impacted by organ and marrow shortages. However, we are concerned regarding the potential for coercion and impact of inadequate medical care in carceral settings. We believe the solution must target the underlying structural problems leading to health disparities, including ongoing needless incarceration of so many who could live freely and safely in our communities.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

You can subscribe to David Sirota\u2019s investigative journalism project, the\u00a0Lever<\/i>,\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Massachusetts Democrats have a bold new proposal for prisoners: donate your organs or bone marrow, and get as little as a couple of months off of your sentence. The legislation, which has attracted five cosponsors in the state house, raises major bioethical concerns for the six-thousand-plus people currently held in the Bay State\u2019s prisons. In [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977670"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=977670"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":977896,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977670\/revisions\/977896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=977670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=977670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=977670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}