Hey, are you using that kidney? January 3, 2011

Nurse recently read a quite peculiar news story: a pair of incarcerated sisters in Mississippi were offered release from prison on the condition that the healthy one donate a kidney the one on daily dialysis.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-kidney-sisters-20101231,0,5041825.story

OOPH! Um, wow. While organ donation is great, the healthy sister is willing, and all that, I call shenanigans. If, as the governor is saying, there is no reason, like threat or rehabilitation, that either sister needs to remain incarcerated, then he should let them go. Period. Fine. Ok.

If one sister wants to donate her kidney, super! Swell! These things can both happen. But. . . once you combine them, you are getting into very murky waters. I see it as very coercive, which is never an appropriate way to make a medical decision. The health risks to the donor are not zero. And if she is making a health decision weighted with “freedom vs. life in prison,” we have issues!

So let’s take it out of the equation. If the sisters are released and then one donates her kidney to the other, without any incentive, then all is well. If they are released and the healthy sister says “uh, nevermind!! j/k!!” then she wan’t really giving true consent in the first place. She was coerced. You can’t pay people for organs for just this reason.

In the future, then, can we tell any other prisoner that they can go free provided they leave a working organ at the door??