The New York Post reports:
Taxpayers may pay $800,000 to give a life-saving heart transplant to an upstate rapist...
If doctors give the OK, Kenneth Pike, 55, would be the first New York prisoner to get a heart transplant. Pike was flown Monday from the state prison in Coxsackie to Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, where 49 patients are awaiting donor hearts.
Pike is serving an 18-to-40-year sentence for sexually assaulting a teenage relative.... He's eligible for parole in 2013....Lots of law-abiding Americans have no way to pay for a heart transplant, and rightly wonder why such care would be offered to prisoners, said Arthur Caplan, a medical ethics expert at the University of Pennsylvania.
