Mississippi Bartering

Mississippi governor Haley Barbour will free two sisters imprisoned for an armed robbery as long a one woman donates her kidney to the other. Ethical questions and southern politics? Like that's ever been mentioned in the same sentence.

Barbour's decision to suspend the life sentences of Jamie and Gladys Scott was applauded by civil rights organizations, who have long said the sentences were too harsh for the crime - armed robbery which netted them $11. The sisters were convicted in 1994 of leading two men into an ambush in central Mississippi the year before. Three teenagers hit each man in the head with a shotgun and took their wallets. Jamie Scott (36) is on daily dialysis, which officials say costs the state about $200,000 a year, and idea to donate the kidney was her sister's. Barbour agreed to the release due to the medical condition, as long as Gladys Scott (38) donates the kidney within one year.

Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, has never heard of anything like this in his 25 years. Even though Gladys Scott proposed the idea in her petition for an early release and volunteered to donate the organ, Caplan adds, it is against the law to buy and sell organs or to force people to give one up. "When you volunteer to give a kidney, you're usually free and clear to change your mind right up to the last minute...When you put a condition on it that you could go back to prison, that's a pretty powerful incentive."

So what happens if she decides, minutes from surgery, to back off the donation? Do they still go free? What happens if testing determines that the two are not compatible for a transplant? They may be a blood match but there's still tissue compatibility. "All of the 'What if' questions are, at this point, purely hypothetical," Barbour said. "We'll deal with those situations if they actually happen." That's the true sign of leadership - not looking to the future to address the potential results or problems from your actions.

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. If the governor is trading someone 20 years for a kidney, that might potentially violate the valuable consideration clause" in federal regulations. That clause is meant to prohibit the buying or selling of organs, and Shapiro said the Scott sisters' situation could violate that rule because it could be construed as trading a thing of value — freedom from prison — for an organ. Putting conditions on parole is a common practice, even requiring people whose sentences are reduced to move elsewhere - but never for trade of organs.

If people are upset about government meddling in their healthcare, imagine the doors it opens to them to make deals for your innards?