Prisons: Rehabilitation or Repository?
Posted by Osagie K. Obasogie March 15, 2007
Biopolitical Times
On the heels of the IOM's suggestion to relax restrictions on using prisoners in clinical trials, South Carolina is looking to push the envelope a bit further: incentivizing prisoners to "donate" organs by skimming 180 days off their sentence. No, this isn't Beijing. We're talking about Charleston which, despite General Lee's efforts, is still subject to federal law that forbids any "valuable consideration" to be given in exchange for organs. This hasn't dismayed a bipartisan state Senate panel, which hopes to find a loophole to permit the proposed program. What's going on here? First the federal government wants to use prisoners to test drugs, now states want to harvest prisoners for their organs. What's next? 200 days shaved from women's prison sentences for donating eggs for stem cell research? This shift from prisons as rehabilitative institutions to profitable biomedical repositories is more than troubling.