Prominent Transplant Surgeon and Ethics Expert Criticizes “Release for Kidney” Decision by Governor
Source: Inside Medicine
December 31st, 2010


Hackensack University Medical Center Transplant Chief Dr. Michael Shapiro is sharply critical of the recent decision of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour to commute life sentences of sisters Gladys and Jamie Scott under the stipulation that one of the sisters donate a kidney to their dialysis-dependent sibling.

Shapiro, who is also the head of the ethics panel at the United Organ Sharing Network, correctly points out several aspects of this pardon that are completely contradictory to the formal rules of how organ transplants are performed in the United States. One severe ethics violation is that donors may not be coerced or induced into providing an organ and the gift of such should not be conditional in any way.

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