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148588 tn?1465778809

New Utah law allows organ donations from prisoners

http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/09/17674231-new-utah-law-allows-organ-donations-from-prisoners-nearly-250-sign-up?lite

".....Utah’s governor, Gary R. Herbert, signed the first state law on March 28 that explicitly permits general prisoners to sign up for organ donation -- and cracks the door to the controversial option of allowing death-row inmates to donate as well........Whether to accept organs from prisoners has long been a thorny issue. Ethics experts say it pits questions of coercion of a vulnerable population against the desperate need for organs in a country where nearly 118,000 people are waiting for hearts, kidneys, livers and other life-saving transplants, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.

In most states, accepting organs from inmates who die while in custody is permitted only rarely and under strictly controlled circumstances. No state allows donation of organs from executed prisoners........Others argue that there are also practical barriers to prison organ donation, such as high rates of disease, difficulty of retrieving organs quickly and execution methods that render organs unusable.

But not everyone believes those barriers should deter donation. Utah state Rep. Steve Eliason, who pushed the law through the legislature, said he was inspired by the 2010 death of Ronnie Lee Gardner, a murderer who wanted to donate his organs but was prohibited from doing so....."




China to phase out prisoner organ donation

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/46849651/ns/world_news-asia_pacific/t/china-phase-out-prisoner-organ-donation/

"BEIJING — State media are quoting a top health official as saying China will phase out the practice of taking organs from executed prisoners.

The official Xinhua News Agency quoted Vice Health Minister Huang Jiefu as saying Thursday that organ donations from condemned prisoners will be abolished within five years. It said hospitals will rely instead on a national organ donation system that is being set up.

China has a huge population in need of transplants but few donors. Most donations come from condemned prisoners. The government says prisoners volunteer to donate organs but rights groups say there are concerns that inmates are pressured to comply before execution.

China performs more executions annually than any other country.

China refuses to say how many prisoners it puts to death each year. Amnesty International estimates it is in the thousands, far more than the number of executions in all other countries combined. The San Francisco-based Dui Hua Foundation estimates China executed 5,000 people in 2009.

In 2009, the country's Health Ministry and the Red Cross Society of China this week launched a national organ donation system to reduce the reliance on death row inmates and encourage donations from the public, the China Daily newspaper reported.

At the time, Chinese health officials said about 1.5 million people in China need transplants, but only some 10,000 operations are performed annually.

In 2007, medical officials agreed not to transplant organs from prisoners or others in custody, except into members of their immediate families.

Also, regulations introduced in 2007 bar donations from living people who are not related to or emotionally connected to the transplant patient.

The scarcity of available organs has also led to a black market, with brokers able to arrange transplants within weeks for Chinese and foreigners willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars. The transplants are also hugely profitable for hospitals.

The China Daily said traffickers have been selling organs from people pressured or forced into donating to people unrelated to them since the tighter regulations went into effect in 2007.

Arthur Caplan, professor of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, told msnbc.com that it is "ethically inexcusable that the world tolerate killing to obtain organs for transportation."

"The practice should not stop in five years," he said. "It should stop in five minutes!"



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jigsaw_Man
25 Responses
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649848 tn?1534633700
If you HARVEST organs before the prisoner is dead, s/he can't live and you won't need the KCl.......

I don't think organs should be taken from death row inmates at all, unless they are being used to save a family member, etc.
Helpful - 0
1310633 tn?1430224091
I think organs need to be HARVESTED from death-row inmates, and have always thought so.

JUST prior to putting the "lethal" part of the injection into their body, slice em' open, take out what you want, THEN slam the Potassium Chloride.

***
1. Sodium Thiopental: ultra-short action barbiturate, an anaesthetic agent capable of rendering the prisoner unconscious in a few seconds.
2. Pancuronium: non-depolarizing muscle relaxant, causes complete, fast and sustained paralysis of the skeletal striated muscles, including the diaphragm and the rest of the respiratory muscles; this would eventually cause death by asphyxiation.
3. Potassium Chloride: stops the heart, and thus causes death by cardiac arrest."
***
Helpful - 0
649848 tn?1534633700
Here's one -- "if it saves even on life, it's worth it".........
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
Where are all of the "if it even saves one life, its worth it" people now?
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
YOu know what... IF that saves one life, I am for it.  Theres a cause to get behind when it comes to saving lives.
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649848 tn?1534633700
There you go - the prisoners HAVE to be willing to donate their organs; not coerced; and everything has to be monitored and done to top standard in order to insure that matches are real, harvested body parts are in the best condition, everything is done to preserve the health of both the donor and recipient.

Anything other than that, would be a "no go" for me. There should be no money passed around for this...... it needs to be "giving for the sake of giving"; nothing more.
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