I think we are long overdue for a spirited debate-we have discussed this topic here on the boards-this is another case.............................................. .................................................. .UMATILLA, Ore., (May 27) - Horacio Alberto Reyes-Camarena, a convicted murderer with failing kidneys, is presenting Oregon officials with a tough choice -- how best to keep him alive until they can execute him.
The cash-strapped state, struggling to provide basic education and health care to its citizens, pays $120,000 a year to clean Reyes-Camarena's blood with a dialysis machine at Umatilla State Prison. That treatment could continue for a decade as he appeals his death sentence in the 1996 murder of an 18-year-old woman.
After Reyes-Camarena's prison doctor last month concluded he was a good candidate for a transplant, state officials may consider giving him a priceless donated kidney. The $100,000 operation could save the state money but would deprive someone outside prison of a life-giving organ.
Reyes-Camarena says he will not ask for the operation but would accept it.
''If they offer it to me, I'll take it but I never want to ask for a kidney,'' Reyes-Camarena told Reuters by telephone ''I'm on death row now. Someday, if it got allowed, I'm going to go through appeals and then the man (executioner) has to do his job. Why take it with me?'' he said.
Many people around the state agree, and news that Reyes-Camarena was a potential candidate for a transplant set off a furious debate last month.
''It's a conundrum because you clearly are required to give medical care to prisoners whether they are on death row or not,'' said Josh Marquis, district attorney for Clackamas County, Oregon, and a staunch death penalty advocate.
Some hospitals have refused to put state health plan members on transplant waiting lists because the plan has cut prescription drug benefits, raising the risk that transplant patients won't be able to pay for expensive drugs that help ensure their bodies do not reject the new organs.
A KILLER
Reyes-Camarena, who stabbed Maria Zetina to death and repeatedly stabbed her sister who survived the attack and testified against him, could be placed on those transplant waiting lists ahead of other state clients.
''The idea that he would live while someone else would die is absurd,'' said Marquis.
Seventeen people die each day in the United States while waiting for kidneys. The national waiting list has 57,000 names. The irony of his preferential treatment is not lost on Reyes-Camarena, who has followed the debate about state cuts and his own care in the news.
''I know people on the outside. They need things and they don't get it. Sometimes being here is better,'' he said.
Patricia Backlar, who served on the National Bioethics Advisory Commission in the Clinton administration, said a death row inmate should not have greater access to medical resources than the state's other health care clients.
But Backlar also cautioned that the state is on a slippery ethical slope if it tries to determine who deserves a transplant based on things like criminal history.
''A lot of people are convicted of crimes they didn't commit,'' she said. ''It's very hard to put a value on someone's worth, so you would want to be cautious before you put yourself in the position of being the God squad.''
Death penalty opponents and health care advocates bristle at the very thought of making such a decision. Reallocating federal funds could provide health care for everyone, said Peter Bergel, director of Oregon PeaceWorks, an agency which opposes the death penalty.
''We need to structure our social policy in such a way as nobody has to make a decision like that,'' Bergel said. ''When we make judgments as to the value of one person's life over the value of another person's life we are making judgments that the creator has reserved for him or herself. We're not gods.''
A $2 billion state budget shortfall, blamed for everything from suicides by mentally ill people who could not get treatment to big cuts in education, has intensified the debate, which might have been avoided in fatter economic years.
''If the state pays (for Reyes-Camarena's kidney) and we don't have enough money to look after our school children or our mentally ill, then that may be an unfair distribution, just because the benefits of it are limited,'' Backlar said.
REUTERS Reut08:00 05-27-03
transplant for death row inmate?
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