It's about damn time!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/06/16/oregon.transplant.reut/index.html
PORTLAND, Oregon (Reuters) -- Oregon has denied a kidney transplant to a death row inmate in the hopes of ending a statewide debate about how best to keep him alive until he is executed, state officials said Monday.
Horacio Reyes-Camarena, a convicted killer, set off a furious debate last month by telling reporters he qualified for the transplant.
Citizens around the state, angry about deep budget cuts that are making it difficult for Oregon to pay for education and health care, weighed in on whether a man sentenced to die should be allowed the $100,000 surgery or the chance to take a donated kidney to his execution.
Although state officials insisted Reyes-Camarena never requested a kidney transplant, Steven Shelton, medical director at Oregon Department of Corrections, said a panel of physicians was asked to consider the transplant to settle the question of whether he would be a candidate.
"We decided if he didn't need to know the answer, everyone else in the world needed to know the answer," Shelton said.
The state pays $120,000 a year to clean Reyes-Camarena's blood with a dialysis machine at Two Rivers Correctional Institution. That treatment could continue for a decade as he appeals his death sentence in the 1996 murder of an 18-year-old woman.
While a kidney transplant for Reyes-Camarena could prove cheaper for taxpayers, the question of whether he should receive the much sought-after organ fueled an emotional debate.
Shelton said prisoners' rights is an ongoing debate, but hoped resolution in this case would turn people to talking about the underlying issues in the Reyes-Camarena debate, namely, the scarcity of organs in the United States and the rising costs of health care.
Shelton and health officials said that they denied the inmate the kidney because he did not meet all the criteria established by the state, which could range from mental health to drug use to prison behavior. The specific reasons why Reyes-Camarena was denied were not disclosed.
"As it stands now, people tend to focus on 'hey, how come those inmates are getting so much?' When the real question is, 'how come I'm getting so little'? Because inmates are not getting that much," Shelton said.
