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Call for Retraction of 400 Scientific Papers On Organ Transplantation Amid Fears That Organs Came From Chinese Prisoners (theguardian.com)
A world-first study has called for the mass retraction of more than 400 scientific papers on organ transplantation, amid fears the organs were obtained unethically from Chinese prisoners. The Guardian reports: The Australian-led study exposes a mass failure of English language medical journals to comply with international ethical standards in place to ensure organ donors provide consent for transplantation. The study was published on Wednesday in the medical journal BMJ Open. Its author, the professor of clinical ethics Wendy Rogers, said journals, researchers and clinicians who used the research were complicit in "barbaric" methods of organ procurement.
"There's no real pressure from research leaders on China to be more transparent," Rogers, from Macquarie University in Sydney, said. "Everyone seems to say, 'It's not our job.' The world's silence on this barbaric issue must stop." A report published in 2016 found a large discrepancy between official transplant figures from the Chinese government and the number of transplants reported by hospitals. While the government says 10,000 transplants occur each year, hospital data shows between 60,000 to 100,000 organs are transplanted each year. The report provides evidence that this gap is being made up by executed prisoners of conscience.
"There's no real pressure from research leaders on China to be more transparent," Rogers, from Macquarie University in Sydney, said. "Everyone seems to say, 'It's not our job.' The world's silence on this barbaric issue must stop." A report published in 2016 found a large discrepancy between official transplant figures from the Chinese government and the number of transplants reported by hospitals. While the government says 10,000 transplants occur each year, hospital data shows between 60,000 to 100,000 organs are transplanted each year. The report provides evidence that this gap is being made up by executed prisoners of conscience.
...was many centuries ago however... The science is still valid though which is what matters...
A while ago, a bunch of Nazi scientists did some very, very unethical research. It was the kind of thing that would turn most people's stomachs. But rather than throw it away, we kept it, and for two reasons.
First, it was new data. They studied things that nobody else was studying (with reason) and medical science learned a lot from this.
Secondly, throwing it away would mean that those who died during this died for nothing. At least this way their sacrifice led to something meaningful.
Provided that these studies are accurate, they shouldn't be rejected, purely because we don't like the source. Sure, stop more abuses and ensure that there aren't any more studies in this vein, but the data exists, don't just throw it away. Keeping it means that we know more and there's less call to repeat these studies!
Unless the papers were on ethics of organ translation, why would they need to be retracted, is the research any less valid just because research involved unethically obtained organs? Papers usually get retracted if the contents are bs, fabrication or plagiarism, not for an ethics problem with the research itself. Science is practical like that, what is true is true, what is false is false, ethics are a completely separate topic.
While most is purloined from elsewhere, the rest of it is tainted in the same way Nazi Science is tainted.
China is a Totalitarian Communist Dictatorship with a facade of a Capitalist Economy.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
For those posting with comments along the lines of: "Why doesn't it matter if innocent slaves were tortured, the science is valid?!"
Ethics in medical (any) science is a very important, and we shouldn't encourage third-world dictatorships to create more suffering by accepting unethical medical research.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-ethics-of-using-medical-data-from-nazi-experiments
Holocaust survivor Susan Vigorito found the use of the word "data" a sterile term. She was 3½ when she and her twin sister, Hannah, arrived at Auschwitz. They were housed for an entire year in Mengele's private lab in a wooden cage a yard and a half wide. Without anesthetic, Mengele would repeatedly scrape at the bone tissue of one of her legs. Her sister died from repeated injections to her spinal column. She claims that she is the real data, the living data of Dr. Mengele.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4822534/
that many of those victims only crime was to be against the government doing/allowing stuff like this to happen.
Sadly, only Chinese people have any real chance of stopping the Chinese government.
The US isn't much better.
Obvious China shill
Organ harvesting from a Nazi-like Chinese government exists, and is going on. Discarding the research sends a message the practice must die out, and good ethical science will replace it like it was never there.
Continuing to allow this does exactly that. It continues to allow prisoners to have their organs unethically harvested in a macabre dystopian 3rd world manner.
You're an apologist. You should have your organs harvested.
And know you know how the mega-wealthy intend to live forever. Let's see ... an old rich dude dies today of liver failure, or an impoverished "prisoner" guilty of somehow offending TPTB dies today. Decisions, decisions ...
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
(unaltered, provably non-deepfake, good chain of custody) or it didn't happen.
Rule of the Internet, remember?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
It sounds like not only does "P"RC execute more people than all others combined, but even the figure used for that most alarming conclusion appears to be grossly underestimated. Wikipedia says executions are "down" to "only" 12000 a year, but 60k-100k (hospital transplant data) - 10k (donors) transplants = 50k-90k "discrepancy" DISGUSTING PRC!! Assholes! I feel sorry rfor ank and file Chinese people who have to live with such a brutal, oppressive, realpolotiking, lying, and just SHITTY government.
Come on, man. The Chinese people are the victims of this.
Basically the US hide all war crime the japanese did at unit 731 in exchange of the results exclusively. Now THAT is unethical and immoral (the russian did something similar they gave slap of the hand prison penalty). As for prisoner... If you are doing death penalty , and there is no incentive to push for it solely for organ donation, then frankly I see as more ethical to enforce organ donation so that the condemned at least repay its debt to society, rather than let the organ rot just "because" some feel it more ethical. As if letting people on a list die is more ethical. That remind me of people wanting to stop donation of anancephallic baby organ to baby on organ transplant waiting list.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The far lefties KNOW that China is unethical in many things.
Yes: everyone knows that.
This is just more of the same that they continue to back.
There's no outrage quite like manufactured outrage. Go on point to when someone you consider "the left" supported China. Bonus points for telling me that China is communist without actually showing when someone supported them.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Ok, so the work was done using illegal, questionable sources, etc. But the work is done, is the science bad?
There's a Pratchett quote along the lines of "The thing about criminals is that they don't obey the law - its part of the job description."
If someone thinks (or was coerced into thinking) that it is OK to torture people, harvest organs without consent etc. then they're not going to blink about falsifying data, especially in an environment where failing to get the result that your superior expects is tantamount to volunteering to be the next experimental subject.
Haven't looked at the organ transplant study in detail (hey, this is an internet forum!) but - for example - if the organs came from a dubious source, how sure can you be that the kidneys supposedly from a healthy 18 year-old woman who was hit by a bus didn't actually come from a 55 year old male prisoner who died after snorting cocaine cut with rat poison?
So, these sorts of data sources are fundamentally untrustworthy - without looking very, very carefully at how the data was gathered (in which case you'll probably end up giving your research students PTSD).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
And also the perpetrators.
We cannot reverse what was done. If the scientists unwittingly used data from forced transplants, they are neither guilty nor complicit. If they knowingly violated ethical guidelines, they can be censured or blacklisted.
We have two choices: whether or not we use this data in the future now that we know about its provenance, and whether or not we use the knowledge that was gained earlier.
I believe that this call for retraction is an overstep and a mistake. Censure the scientists who knowingly benefited from organ harvesting, but do not purge this knowledge from the scientific record (which is essentially what a retraction does). Pushing science and medicine backwards has a cost as well, and that cost ultimately falls on everyone.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Finally an example of where it doesn't really apply. This is some appalling stuff. All of it should be thrown out.
As someone pointed out, while the previous example doesn't exist anymore so the data can be used, whereas the current example does exist and we shouldn't be encouraging/condoning this behavior and should be actively censuring them.