On March 1, Health Director-General Tan Sri Dr Abu...

On March 1, Health Director-General Tan Sri Dr Abu Bakar Suleiman said the Health Ministry will not consider a long-standing proposal raised in the early 1970s, when the wish of death-row inmate Wong Siew Chin, aka Botak Chin, to donate his organs could not be fulfilled, to allow prisoners on death row to donate their organs, because of the high potential for abuse. "Since a prisoner's freedom is taken away from him, the question is whether he has a voluntary say in the matter," said Abu Bakar, who also heads the Malaysian Society of Transplantation. He added that there have been patients who went to China for commercial organ transplants, where the organs were taken from executed prisoners. "Some medical professionals in China have said they do not endorse such a practice, and even the Government may not endorse it, but patients who went for commercial transplants there have informed us that they received organs from executed prisoners," he said. Abu Bakar also said the International Society of Transplantation has taken a very strong stand against the practice which contravenes the international code of ethics and infringes basic human rights. The stand is based on the perceptions that: 1) cooperation and advice on execution is and will be seen by others as a direct medical doctor's involvement in the execution and will dignify the execution process; 2) inevitably, the execution technology will be altered to benefit the transplantation process; 3) organ donation could then be used by some governments to further justify executions; 4) the negative imagery of execution and the positive imagery of transplantation should not be co-symbolized; 5) since capital punishment is a violation of autonomy, how can voluntary informed consent ever be obtained from a death row prisoner? Abu Bakar declared that the Malaysian Society of Transplantation, an affiliate of the international body, supports this stand.