Killer's quest: Allow organ donation after execution

[jimmy olsen]

While likely simply a ploy to delay his own execution, lets look past that and debate the issue on its own merits. Should death row inmates be allowed to donate their organs?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42667886/ns/health-health_care/?GT1=43001

Killer's quest: Allow organ donation after execution
Ore. death row inmate Christian Longo seeks redemption, but state says no

By JoNel Aleccia Health writer
msnbc.com
updated 4/21/2011 9:33:07 AM ET

An Oregon death row inmate is mounting an aggressive behind-bars campaign to donate his organs after he's executed, in part to repay society for the gruesome murders of his wife and three young children.

Christian Longo, 37, says he wants to do more to take responsibility for killing his family and dumping their bodies in coastal bays nearly a decade ago than simply accepting execution by lethal injection.

"Why go out and waste your organs when you have the potential to go out and save six to 12 lives?" reasons Longo, whose voice is measured and articulate on the phone from Oregon State Penitentiary cell DRU31 in Salem.

His request to drop his appeals in exchange for being allowed to donate organs has been flatly denied by state corrections officials, who refuse to negotiate with a killer. It's been denounced in principle as "morally reprehensible" by the nation's organ donation officials and medical ethicists.

"I don't think we want to be the kind of society that takes organs from prisoners," said Dr. Paul R. Helft, director of the Charles Warren Fairbanks Center for Medical Ethics and Indiana University. "To do so would be to use unfree prisoners as a means to an end."

Lobbying in media, on Facebook
Longo's quest, which boasts its own website and Facebook page and was featured in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, renews questions about whether changing inmate donation policies could help ease the nation's dire shortage of transplantable organs — or whether it relies on an innately manipulative or vulnerable population of prisoners.

"It's impossible to be sure that a person who is behind bars is making a decision they would make while walking down the street," says Jeffrey Orlowski, executive director of the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations, the non-profit group that represents the nation's 58 regional groups.

Ironically, a survey of organ transplant centers nationwide reveals that while taking organs from executed inmates is prohibited, accepting organs from inmates who die of other causes while in custody is permitted, although rarely and under strict circumstances.

Longo probably has a better chance of donating his liver if he's injured or has a stroke in prison and dies later at a local hospital.

In such a situation, even the Oregon Department of Corrections couldn't stand in the way, spokeswoman Jeanine M. Hohn says.  "We would not hinder any such donations."

Donations after inmates died of injury or illness while in custody have been allowed, though rarely, even in Longo's region, said Mike Seely, executive director of the Pacific Northwest Transplant Bank. "It's happened once or twice in the 20 years I've been here," Seely says.

Transplant advocates, including those who've received organs, say increasing the supply of available organs is the bottom line, and that willing prisoners should be allowed to donate to often-desperate recipients.

"I wouldn't have cared what heart I got," says Hiland Doolittle, a 65-year-old writer from Albany, N.Y., who waited two years before his 2009 transplant. "When you can't tie your shoes, you know you're at the end of your rope."

Opinion: Organs from inmates: That idea should be DOA

"If someone is sick enough, long enough and wants to live, they'll gladly take an organ from someone who was incarcerated," says Joanne Kelley, president of TripleHeart, Inc.,an Atlanta-based support group for heart transplant patients. Her 58-year-old husband, "Kel" Kelly, died in 2008 after living with a donor heart for nine years.

But death row opponents, doctors and ethicists counter that larger societal questions are at stake that supersede individual demands for organs.

'Too many problems'
"I don't think it's a calculus that this life can be taken so this life can be spared," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a non-profit group that opposes capital punishment. "I think you've got to look at the larger picture. The system that gets put in place once the green light is given for that has too many problems."

But Longo figures that he alone could save eight lives through his death, offering his heart, lungs kidneys, liver and other tissues. That would put a dent right away in Oregon's waiting list, which includes 768 requests, including 13 hearts, 122 livers and 628 kidneys.

And it could bring down the national waiting list, which on Tuesday totaled 110,772 candidates, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.

"To be able to save so many lives, that means a lot to me as well," says Longo.

Such a statement is difficult to square with a man convicted of strangling his 34-year-old wife, MaryJane, and their 2-year-old daughter, Madison, stuffing their bodies in suitcases and then throwing them into coastal waters. He was also convicted of murdering Zachery, 4, and Sadie Ann, 3, by tying rock-filled pillow cases to their ankles and throwing them into icy Oregon inlets in late December 2001.

And it's hard to hear from a man who went back to work at his job at a local Starbucks outlet in the days after the murders before fleeing to Mexico, where he told people he was a New York Times reporter, went swimming and snorkeling, and struck up a brief romance with a woman, according to court records. When he was caught, he denied the killings.

"I didn't want people to believe it was something I was capable of," says Longo. "The past is the past. Essentially, over time, my conscience got to me."

Donating his organs won't atone for the murders, says Longo, who now claims he believes his death sentence is just. It would allow him to do some good, however, perhaps providing comfort to his family.

"This is a way that I won't fail," he says."It does do something for me from a psychological standpoint."

[Eddie Teach]

While likely simply a ploy to delay his own execution,

He's offering to drop his appeals if they allow the donation, doesn't sound like he's looking to delay. More likely trying to seek redemption in some small part, assuage his conscience, score points for the afterlife/ next reincarnation, etc.

lets look past that and debate the issue on its own merits. Should death row inmates be allowed to donate their organs?

Yes.

[The Brain]

What's the argument against allowing them to donate?

[C.C.R.]

What's the argument against allowing them to donate?

Because letting saps give their organs away for free cuts into my lucrative organ harvesting business...

[The Brain]

What's the argument against allowing them to donate?

Because letting saps give their organs away for free cuts into my lucrative organ harvesting business...

I remember many years ago on EUOT I started a thread about how I'd like to sell my organs at death, not donate them. People were like "omg that's horrible! Think of teh.... something!".

[grumbler]

I remember many years ago on EUOT I started a thread about how I'd like to sell my organs at death, not donate them. People were like "omg that's horrible! Think of teh.... something!".

That was because your plan for collecting the money was utterly ridiculous.

[The Brain]

I remember many years ago on EUOT I started a thread about how I'd like to sell my organs at death, not donate them. People were like "omg that's horrible! Think of teh.... something!".

That was because your plan for collecting the money was utterly ridiculous.

Elaborate.

[Norgy]

What if the soul resides in, say, a kidney? Wouldn't want a murderer soul with a new kidney. 

[grumbler]

That was because your plan for collecting the money was utterly ridiculous.

Elaborate.

That (people responding like "omg that's horrible!") was (back when it happened) because (and on account of) your (horrible) plan  (if we want to call such a concept a "plan") for collecting (after your death) the money (paid for your organs) was utterly (and completely) ridiculous (and silly).

[JacobL]

What's the argument against allowing them to donate?

Many Sci-Fi shows/movies/episodes where death row inmate body parts corrupt otherwise good citizens.

[grumbler]

What's the argument against allowing them to donate?

Many Sci-Fi shows/movies/episodes where death row inmate body parts corrupt otherwise good citizens.

Plus those that suppose that, if death row inmate organs are useful to society then there will be a movement to increase the number of felons executed, so as to increase the supply of parts.

[Slargos]

What's the argument against allowing them to donate?

Many Sci-Fi shows/movies/episodes where death row inmate body parts corrupt otherwise good citizens.

Plus those that suppose that, if death row inmate organs are useful to society then there will be a movement to increase the number of felons executed, so as to increase the supply of parts.

Which is certainly a good argument against selling your organs in the first place. Who's to say someone won't make them available prematurely? 

[The Brain]

What's the argument against allowing them to donate?

Many Sci-Fi shows/movies/episodes where death row inmate body parts corrupt otherwise good citizens.

Plus those that suppose that, if death row inmate organs are useful to society then there will be a movement to increase the number of felons executed, so as to increase the supply of parts.

Which is certainly a good argument against selling your organs in the first place. Who's to say someone won't make them available prematurely? 

Kitchen salesmen may be worth more dead than alive but nucular dudes are not.

[DGuller]

There aren't that many people executed in US to begin with.  Hopefully allowing organ donation will provide the needed incentives to increase that number.

[Slargos]

What's the argument against allowing them to donate?

Many Sci-Fi shows/movies/episodes where death row inmate body parts corrupt otherwise good citizens.

Plus those that suppose that, if death row inmate organs are useful to society then there will be a movement to increase the number of felons executed, so as to increase the supply of parts.

Which is certainly a good argument against selling your organs in the first place. Who's to say someone won't make them available prematurely? 

Kitchen salesmen may be worth more dead than alive but nucular dudes are not.

After Fukushima, perhaps not.