This peculiar story about two sisters who received harsh prison sentences who are now being granted clemency so that one sister can donate 1 of her kidneys to her other sister to save her life is certainly a bit of a sordid tale but, in the end, hopefully a live donor donation will save another person's life.
From the article: "Dr. Michael Shapiro, chief of organ transplants at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey and the chair of the ethics committee at the United Network for Organ Sharing, said the organ transplant should not be a condition of release.
"The simple answer to that is you can't pay someone for a kidney," Shapiro said. "If the governor is trading someone 20 years for a kidney, that might potentially violate the valuable consideration clause" in federal regulations."
For the life of me, I'm a bit flabbergasted about how he is so caught up worrying about a statutory construct of valuable consideration (see my earlier post here where I discuss this) instead of focusing on the pertinent outcome - that being one sister empowering another sister to survive by donating to her one of her two kidneys.
To me, this is a feel good ending (or will be one, when the transplant takes place) to a sorry tale of crime, punishment, and perhaps too harsh sentences for a couple of wayward sisters.
Kudos to Governor Barbour for taking some heat and granting the clemencies. Thank you to my brother for bringing this story to my attention.
No comments:
Post a Comment