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China Admits Use of Death-Row Organs
h.ross.perot writes "Like a page from Larry Niven's Known Space series, here is a real report of criminals' organs being harvested for 'profit.' From the article: 'China is trying to move away from the use of executed prisoners as the major source of organs for transplants. According to the China Daily newspaper, executed prisoners currently provide two-thirds of all transplant organs. The government is now launching a voluntary donation scheme, which it hopes will also curb the illegal trafficking in organs.
But analysts say cultural bias against removing organs after death will make a voluntary scheme hard to implement.'"
I think that it would be a waste NOT to use these organs. The prisoners will be executed either way, might as well make them contribute some good to society to offset whatever they were sentenced to death for. There is a possible conflict of interest, though, if the judges start getting paid off to sentence people to death...
I'll get this all sorted out in a few hundred years.
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I have not heard any outcries about "Zionist barbarians". I believe you are misrepresenting the views of the people you are opposing. It is a cheap trick that does not add anything constructive to the discussion. Please stop doing that.
It is a fact that there is organized, illegal organ trade in Israel. See for example an article in Jerusalem Post, Jul 23, 2007 (available on the web). I do not believe that this a "total fabrication", as the Jerusalem Post would presumably have little interest in fabricated smearing in this case. Or do you mean that the accusations against the _state_ of Israel are untrue, as opposed to the accusations against _citizens_ of Israel?
In the case of China, I believe it has been proved that the state is involved. On the other hand, Chinese organ trade uses bodies of its own citizens, whereas in the Israeli case, bodies of citizens from other countries are used. I think it is completely fair to demand investigations in both cases.
You'll note that all the specimens are Asian...
The Indiana University Center for Bioethics has an interesting bibliography about inmates and organ donation in the United States (not harvesting) http://www.bioethics.iu.edu/body.cfm?id=79. Obviously inmates are - in some states at least - not even allowed to donate their organs and in some cases not even to close family. The ethical questions concering the death penalty aside: Harvesting without consent is IMHO not an ethical thing to do under any circumstances. Whatever guilt there was has been paid with the death penalty, after that, the will of the deceased should be respected. In doubt, consider silence as a "no". That inmates are prohibited to donate organs (donate as in: Not for profit and of their own free will) is equally nonsensical.
I suspect most of us agree that after death we won't be needing those organs... So give society a favor and fill out that organ donor card. It's just one more card in your wallet after all. Saving someone's life post-mortem is not a bad last accomplishment. :)
Granted, your liver might end up in a person worthy of a Darwin award, but it's a risk I'm willing to take myself. ;)
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Some people feel that they will not get the full medical care that they would have gotten otherwise. For instance when you do not opt-in, Doctors would hopefully fight until the very end to save you. Should you opt-in, when does the Doctor draw the line to save you versus save the organs for transplant. Doctors cannot save you AND the organs, so when people feel troubled that this creates a conflict of interest with their mortality at stake, they vote against it. This may be based on incorrect data, but it is a prevalent attitude.
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I mean, "ghoul" comes to mind, but it's the only one that comes close.
They are parting people out for profit. Literal chop-shops for human bodies. It's a proposition only the most extreme horror movies have touched. It's the walking definition of Capital-E Evil.
You have to remember there have been three parts to the accusations. They just ADMITTED to the first one.
1. That the Chinese were selling organs of condemned prisoners, which they've always denied until now, and
2. That many of these people were condemned for their political views, and
3. That many of these people were condemned for being a marketable genotype.
Dear God. We have a government admittedly selling human organs for profit, the one thing that every medical ethicist in the world has always agreed would be the prima facie standard of "morally and ethically repugnant" and your response is "Waste not, want not"?!
They are killing people and selling the meat on an open market. I don't care that they're only doing it to the "bad" people. All of the fantasy Halloween monsters are laughable in comparison. Even the Texas Chainsaw family could cry hunger, not greed, as a motive.
Our beloved trading partners, who probably manufactured half the stuff in my house, are literally selling the human flesh and bone of the people they killed and butchered.
We don't have the words to fit this crime. I've always had a problem with the idea of an Eternal Hell, but stuff like this makes a strong argument for it.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
China publicly harvests organs and people hardly notice. Israel is accused of harvesting organs, a total fabrication, and there's an outcry, demanding an investigation into these Zionist barbarians. What the hell?
When were these allegations against Israel? I've been paying pretty close attention to media driven hysteria for a couple years now, and I think I've completely missed this one. Where is the proof of the hysteria (from an American-centric POV), and where is the disproof that it actually happened? Are you sure you aren't thinking that minor outcry over things you pay attention to and care about are not being greatly conflated?
Actually if there was public, and proven, allegations of ANYONE harvesting organs against their will, I would be generally angry, and somewhat apathetic at the same time.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
I can't believe that got an "Informative" tag when it's based on one old phone interview and wild speculation by a tabloid reporter. There is zero evidence that the IDF kills people in order to harvest their organs. This is blood libel, plain and simple.
Israel has an extreme shortage of organs, and every time there is a successful transplant it's all over the news sites, with the identity of the donor (usually a motor accident victim). Now you'll tell me that's all a fabricated conspiracy? Give me a break.
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I dunno why everbody is suddenly surprised, it has been known for quite a long time that China harvest organs from death row prisoner (end of 90 local china group were claimoring it, 2000 some major paper reported it, and I assume by then many state department knew it), what is NEW is that they admitted it *NOW* and want to introduce ethical organ harvesting practice. So whereas everybody get their panty in a knot and cheap shot China, one should note (as the WHO did) that this is a bettering of the situation. China should be encouraged at that point in time , because they are trying to do the right thing. And all I see in this thread are cheap shots.
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The allegations are recent and were made by a Swedish tabloid newspaper, see Wikipedia.
BBC News article
CNN article
There have been allegations of an Israeli human body part smuggling ring for years (2003 BBC report).
The new allegations centre around a scandal in New Jersey in which two state legislators and several Rabbis have been arrested for trafficking in human body parts. The Slate article claims that Jewish religious law allow most other laws can be broken to save the life of a Jew ("for the sake of saving a life, a Jew is allowed to break just about any commandment.") and that the Rabbis would see human body part trafficking as a good thing ("They sincerely felt they were not hurting anyone; indeed, by giving life to another, they probably felt they were mimicking the divine. They were in the business of saving lives.") The additional allegation made by the Swedish newspaper is that the IDF were removing organs from Palestinian prisoners who die in custody, and from other sources of dead Palestinian bodies, in order to supply the smuggling groups.
That is what I thought when I read TFA.
There has long been speculation that killed inmates were used for organ donations - not in the least because often the family can not see the body, and execution dates are set usually less than a day or sometimes only hours before the execution. So many families can not say farewell to the prisoner. And organs for donation are of course best used fresh.
What is new of course, and what surprises me, is that the China government admits they are doing it. They are usually so secretive about anything that may be controversial, this admission comes really as a surprise to me.
Organ donation in China is far far lower than in the West. This is largely cultural (same as in Hong Kong, my place of residence), as people believe the body is best kept intact for burial/cremation. While in Western cultures that is not so much an issue. As a result there are very few people allowing organs to be donated.
But this article is also a bit sensationalist: they claim China puts more people to death than any other country. I am not surprised. China is the most populous nation in the world. Nr 2, India, also has the death penalty but is barely using this form of punishment. What would be more interesting would be the number of people put to death per million population or so. The USA is known for putting many people to death also, but China simply has more than four times the population.
Create a central registry of organ donors.
Once you have been on the registry for (say) two years, you get preference over someone else if you need an organ.
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The only outcry I heard was Israel screaming "ANTI-SEMITISM!!" when the reports surfaced.
Which, to be fair, it almost certainly was. There is no sign of any real evidence that support the reports.
What is, to my mind, totally unreasonable was the Isreali government's stance of blaming the entire country for the behaviour of a single independent newspaper.
That has to be one of the dumbest things I've seen online for quite a while.
Why the hell didn't you LINK to that article? Are we just supposed to browse through every single article in that newspaper from that day in order to find that article? Take your word for it? This isn't a book where you can't include the article - link to the bloody thing!
I read a report by a Chinese doctor who fled the country and said some donors were still alive when they started removing the organs. The donors were killed by a shooting squad and some weren't hit properly. The doctors were ordered to remove the organs anyways ASAP.
That probably wouldn't be a problem anyway. If you 'full body' is intact, so will the recipient of your organs body. Since he no longer need your organ, you would be able to have it back. It might take som divine swapping of organs before everything is straighned out, but since He is all-powerfull that shouldn't be too much of a problem :)
Still, the right to donate organs should be entirely up to the donor. I do however see the point in an opt-out system as mentionended before.
I would say that's a very minority Christian view. I'm a Christian AND a registered organ donor. In fact, here's a listing of various denominations of Christianity (and other religions) and their view of organ donation. Granted I only skimmed the list, but I did not see one that opposed organ donation, and a number that highly recommend it as an act of Christian love.
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
You are correct about organs. But, as many have pointed out, the problem is that harvesting organs from people you kill creates a profit motive for killing people and thus creates pressure for more people to be killed.
*That* is the problem.
Hey, speak for yourself. My organs are going to be pickled in canopic jars so that I can use them in the afterlife. Except, my brain that is. You can scoop that out through my nose with a long spoon - won't be needing that, thank you very much.
Israel on the other hand has a functioning democracy
Israel has a strange kind of functioning democracy, where the citizens of Israeli occupied territories are both denied actual citizenship and denied a vote in the Israeli elections, and when those citizens elect a representative government for their own territory, that government is called illegal and terrorist and ignored.
and pays for everything.
Israel is the largest total recipient of direct economic and military assistance from the United States since World War II, and it was the largest annual recipient from 1976 to 2003. Israel pays for everything? Yes, with US taxpayer dollars.