Massachusetts prisoners to donate body organs for freedom.

Massachusetts Democrats have a bold new proposal for inmates to donate their organs or bone marrow. And get as little as a few months to cancel their sentence.

The law has raised serious ethical concerns for the more than 6,000 people currently held in Bay State prisons. Basically, the bill would ask prisoners what is more important to them: their freedom or their organs and bone marrow.

The bill appears to go beyond other organ donation policies for prisoners. The Federal Bureau of Prisons states that inmates can donate their organs while incarcerated. But only for close family members.

The new bill, called HD 3822, states:

“The Bone Marrow and Organ Donation Program will provide eligible inmates with a reduction of at least 60 days and no more than 365 days in the length of their sentence served in Department of Corrections facilities or in House of Corrections Department of Corrections facilities at the facility. to reform behavior, as long as the imprisoned person has donated bone marrow or an organ”.

Law project
The bill is unlikely to pass and may even violate federal law, as a similar bill in 2007 failed due to conflicts with the state’s organ transplant law. 1984. The law makes it illegal to “knowingly acquire, receive or transfer”. any human organ for legal consideration for its use in human transplantation,

There is a long history in the medical field of doctors trying and abusing prisoners, including in Massachusetts. Although current laws prohibit the state Department of Corrections from “using one or more inmates for medical, medicinal, or cosmetic experiments,” in 1942 a Harvard Medical School professor injected 64 Massachusetts inmates with cow’s blood as part of the World War. II military search, and kill one of the subjects.