In January 2023, Massachusetts state Reps. Carlos González and Judith A. García introduced HD 3822, focusing on allowing incarcerated individuals to donate organs or bone marrow in exchange for sentence reductions. This initiative aimed to tackle the organ shortage crisis and racial inequities in organ matching, as people of color face greater barriers in finding donors. Despite its removal from the proposal, it sparked essential debates in bioethics regarding the treatment of incarcerated individuals, spotlighting broader health justice issues linked to mass incarceration.
The bill aimed not only to address the organ shortage crisis, where over 100,000 people are currently on the national transplant waiting list, but also to address racial inequities in organ donation.
The proposed donation program would help marginalized communities gain access to life-saving tissue that they have historically been deprived of by procuring marrow and organs from the incarcerated population.
This bill was roundly criticized and eventually revised to remove the incentives for donations, raising important bioethical questions pertaining to the treatment of incarcerated persons.
Numerous bioethicists have sought to bring attention to incarceration as a proper concern of bioethics and health justice, emphasizing the extensive harm to both individual and public health.
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