Capital punishment
Sir: Hard on your prediction (Notebook, November 22) Mrs Thatcher has announced her conversion to the cause of capital punishment. As the issue looks like becoming very much a live one in months to come, I would like to bring to your readers' attention a possible aspect of the matter which has received little public notice.
Since abolition, there has been continuous if
unsteady progress in the field of transplant surgerY' and political bombing and assassination seems to be very much a young man's (or woman's) garne' Accordingly, it seems likely that any convicted IRA, PLO, Bader-Meinhof or similar murderer could he expected to yield two kidneys, a liver, a heart, a dozen or so pints of blood, and possibly other items which might occur to an imaginative surgeon. All of the could be transplanted in absolutely fresh condition into the bodies of suitable recipients in a set ei simultaneous operations, and one could reasonablY expect a significantly higher success rate than 1.5, currently enjoyed, partly because of the aforesaiu freshness, but mainly because there would be the opportunity for more leisurely preparation °I recipients, and tests for tissue compatability than On generally be managed with (for instance) a dying crash victim in an acute general hospital. Probably some potential recipients would decline transplants in such circumstances, regarding the source as tainted, but I suspect they would be the minority. I doubt that many surgeons would he unwilling to take part. As your medical correspon. dent has pointed out more than once, they cheerfullY murder the innocent by abortion, so why should they not execute the guilty by transplant, so long as their fees are paid? It may be that we can look forward to a day wheri the old clich6 about criminals 'repaying their debt to society' will have to take on an entirely novel, but ncit' in my view, sinister meaning. C. N. Gilmore 39 Beechcroft Road, Oxford,
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