Organ Donation And Transplant Statics Analysis

Discussions involving the healthcare system in the United States often result in clashes on the proper way to allocate resources. This divide continues to widen when involving limited resources and who deserves them. This idea is expressed in the story of Horacio Alberto Reyes-Camarena, a death row inmate receiving dialysis due to kidney failure. He desires a tax-payer funded kidney transplant in order to discontinue his dialysis treatment. Regrettably, kidneys are in high demand with over one-hundred thousand people waiting for a kidney transplant at the beginning of this year (“Organ Donation and Transplant Statics”). The question then becomes, should a scarce resource, such a kidney, be given to a death row inmate? Prisoners not only should …show more content…
Just because they are prisoners doesn’t mean they deserve a different idea of basic health. Organ transplantation can be accessed by the general population even if it has the barriers of cost and scarcity of the organ. To deny the consideration to prisoners is an additional societal punishment added on to their already lawfully sentenced punishment. Getting an organ transplant is life or death for some people. In the case of Mr. Reyes-Camarena, who is on dialysis, the stakes may not be as high. In denying him the chance to get an organ he would still be able to live for some time, maybe even until his execution. The ability to live with dialysis is true for anyone receiving a kidney transplant, though. What makes the general population different than Mr. Reyes-Camarena? Why is a kidney transplant a necessity for them but not Mr. Reyes-Camarena? Society should not decide who is worth saving and who is not. The option should be given to the prisoner, and then a nonpartisan judge can determine the prisoner’s worth by a set of …show more content…
In deontology, what is right and wrong is based on duty. Because the prisoner is still human, society has a duty to still treat them as such. The point of deontology is to look at a situation logically regardless of feelings, wishes, or circumstances. Logically, if the situation was assessed without regard to the prisoner breaking the law, then people would say that a person has a right be considered for an organ transplant. The feelings regarding a sense of bad and good are what changes the situation for many. The prisoner is bad, but the free person is good. A good person deserves a reward while the bad person deserves punishment. However, the prisoner is already receiving punishment. In the case of Mr. Reyes-Camarena, he was given the punishment of death. Denying him a right that other people receive is further punishment. The actions placed upon him should be in regard to his needs as a human not as a knee jerk reaction of the feelings of