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China Plans To End Executed Prisoner Organ Donations Within 5 Years
An anonymous reader writes "China said that it planned to end the practice of taking organs from executed prisoners within five years, according to the state media report on Friday. Instead, China's vice minister of health Dr. Huang Jiefu said that the country will rely on a new national donation system for organ transplants at a conference in the city of Hangzhou on Thursday."
i know this will get me downmodded - but why is this something that makes sense? imho those organs (which are most likely needed) now just go to waste, because those people will get killed either way
on the firewall of china, then the closure of a controversial forced organ donation program. hm....
the optomistic me says china has finally decided to become a socialist democracy like switzerland. full healthcare for the masses, equal job for equal pay, clean air and fresh water and heck even a pound of tea and a stockpot of porkbelly for everyone. who needs the american trade model, lets cash in and build a better tomorrow for us all!
but seriously this is probably a controlled set of government reform actions designed to bolster trust and confidence in the chinese people. The party is largely viewed as a corrupt capitalist dictatorship, and has been the target of an escalating number of street protests recently.
TFA says the announcement wasn't linked to ethical concerns, but only to health concerns - high rates of fungus and bacterial infections in prisoners are causing problems for the recipients.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Me too. Unless they kill prisoners just to get their organs.
Kill all hipsters.
China Plans To End Executed Prisoner Organ Donations Within 5 Years
This word, "donations", I do not think it means what you think it means.
And that Sir, is where you get the moral problem.
In the US, the execution techniques usually used would leave the organs unsuitable for re-use. They would either be saturated with toxins (lethal injection) or cooked (electric chair).
In China, the usual method of execution is a bullet into the back of the head.
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Who gives a shit? These people were dead anyway. It doesn't matter what happens to their body afterwards
“How we treat our dead is part of what makes us different than those did the slaughtering.” - Shepherd Book
The problem arises when the fact that an executed person's organs can be harvested plays into the calculus of the judge or jury who decides to sentence a person to death. Put another way, if every executed prisoner is a potential source of organs, then you've created a very perverse incentive to execute more prisoners. I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad idea, but you have to be mindful of unintended consequences.
Nobody in China wants to donate, because of cultural reasons (they are selfish? they think it's "icky"? they don't trust doctors? it's not really Buddhist? no idea).
In traditional Chinese culture, it is important to preserve the body whole for the afterlife. I think the belief is that any deficiency is passed over to the afterlife.
Of course, the high rates of fungal and bacterial infections in prisoners suggest another ethical problem.
People don't oppose taking organs from the executed because of "antiquated religious nonsense". They oppose it because it gives the government a perverse incentive to execute more people.
If you're on trial, do you really want the judge or jury thinking, even subconsciously, "gee, we could sure use that guy's organs"?
By the way, in the future you might want to put the tiniest modicum of effort into understanding people's positions before launching into, "hurr hurr religious people are dumb and haven't thought this through."
Because this is China.
Executable offensives include: political dissent, terrorism, drug dealing, child pornography, being of the wrong religous groups, the usual laundry list.
Where it gets exciting is when they send doctors to determine your blood type to decide if you've committed an executable offense.
We're already running a largely for-profit prison system in this country. Forgive me if I don't trust that sort of system with "organ donations". There is already too high of an incentive to jail people for non-violent drug related crimes as it is.
Citations provided. It's pretty grisly stuff. The profitability of doing organ donations on the side, without official due process, has even motivated some jurisdictions to convict more readily. Better still, fraud is a capital offence.
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And here we have a perfect example of a sadist who waits for a moral and legal justification to do what serial killers do.
Congratulations sir, you are a creepy fuck and I hope I never find myself anywhere near you in real life.
Larry Niven already told us how this will end in his story "The Jigsaw Man" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jigsaw_Man
Your "fair share" is NOT in my wallet.
Donald Trump, in I forget which TV show, estimated the value of a human body to be worth around $23 million. I for one am not going to give that away when I die, not when my family could benefit from it. Currently the hospitals don't even borther to cover funeral expenses after you give them your extremely valuable organs, which are likely worth more then the life insurance policy your making payments on. Why do we have a system like this?
I think all you would need is some kind of modified durable power of attorney in place, prior to death, that transfers ownership of your cadaver to a beneficiary who can part you out to the highest bidders. I would imagine the cryonics industry would be able to capitalize on this, they have already proven the ability to reanimate individual organs.