A Long Island doctor is demanding that his estranged wife give him back the kidney he donated to her seven years ago. Dr. Richard Batista's lawyer Dominic Barbara says his client would also be satisfied with the value of the kidney: $1.5 million.
Newsday reports that Batista married wife Dawnell in 1990 and that he donated the kidney in 2001. According to Batista, their marriage was on the rocks then, but "My first priority was to save her life. The second bonus was to turn the marriage around." Dawnell Batista filed for divorce in 2005. Dr. Batista told WCBS 880, "She had an affair, then would not reconcile, then handed me divorce papers as I was going into surgery trying to save another person's life.
Medical ethicists tells Newsday "the case is a nonstarter."Arthur Caplan at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics said Batista's chances of getting his kidney or money back is "somewhere between impossible and completely impossible." And Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of Ethics medical ethicist Robert Veatch said, "it's illegal for an organ to be exchanged for anything of value" and organ donation is legally a gift.
