China Plans To End Executed Prisoner Organ Donations Within 5 Years 214
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."
sure... (Score:2, Insightful)
one of the few things that China did that actually seemed to make sense.
Re:sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
Me too. Unless they kill prisoners just to get their organs.
Re:sure... (Score:5, Informative)
And that Sir, is where you get the moral problem.
Re:sure... (Score:5, Informative)
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(By 'due process', I just mean proper procedures, not trial. Bad choice of words.)
At least in the US, that appears to be the new official definition of 'due process'.
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I've actually heard of some people who refuse to be an organ donor in the states on account of the fear of some hospitals or their families being all too ready to pull the plug on them and get those delicious organs. Organ donation is a huge business in any country.
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You can't have enough of that foie gras.
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I've heard this too. A family member of mine has said that we're free to allow her organs to be used for whatever once she's dead. But she won't put 'organ donor' on her ID because she wants medical decisions that affect her to be made based entirely on her medical state, not what may or may not happen to her organs.
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So why not fix the broken justice system, but keep harvesting the organs? Why abolish the only GOOD thing about the whole situation?
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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
The concern is that someone may have a mock trial and be condemned to death just because their kidneys (pancreas, liver, ...) are a match for the ailing party chairman.
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Thats a weak argument, an ailing party chairman powerful enough to do that sort of thing won't have any problem ordering the harvesting the organs anyways and ordering the cremation of the body. Or more likely, to kidnap the person, harvest the organs and dispose of the body, cheaper and easier to conceal that bribing a gazillon of officers and judges and hoping to prevent a leak that likely will destroy his political career.
I disagree. It's a lot easier to dip into a large organ stream rather than off people on the street with black ops-style operations. And how are you going to find that perfect organ match? Prison provides the testing infrastructure and keeps potential matches from escaping. All you need is a plausible means for killing the person, such as conviction of a capital crime.
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China though has 55 "offenses" that are a capital "crime" including theft, smuggling of drugs, counterfeiting currency, rape and murder.
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I think you two are agreeing actually.
Re-read it as "Sure, [cancel] one of the few things that China did that actually seemed to make sense"
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> Government figures from the health ministry show that about 1.5 million people in China need transplants, but only 10,000 transplants are performed annually, according to Xinhua.
In other words, prisoner "donations" just aren't enough. FTA, they don't like using condemned prisoner organs, because they aren't usually in good shape anyway. 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).
I'm
Re:sure... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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So cremation is right out, then?
What did they do before modern embalming?
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Cremation was introduced by the communists and is now prevalent in modern China.
I am not sure whether they cared about preservation. The important part is to be buried whole.
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the afterlife.
But I thought they were a bunch of godless communists!
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The official reason given (or one of them, anyway) is that the organs harvested are often diseased or in some way defective.
Whatever the reason, I welcome the change. Since reading some of Larry Niven (The Jigsaw Man [wikipedia.org] in particular) I've shared his concern that once the public start to profit from the deaths of criminals they will increase the number of capital crimes, eventually to the point where people are being dismantled for mere traffic violations. This is of course a sort of reductio ad absurdum but I
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eventually to the point where people are being dismantled for mere traffic violations.
That was REPEATED violations. Sort of like three strikes out, with Reckless Driving being the lowest level of strike. Given that people could have died in each offense, it wasn't quite so absurd as, frex, False Advertising, which also would get one sent to the organ banks.
Of course, the ultimate was on the Home colony, where walking on the grass would and did get someone shot (at least back before the Brennan Monster killed everyone outside of the right age range with aerosolized Tree-Of-Life virus).
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What's the one set on Home called? I'd quite like to read something new.
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There was none, until recently when he wrote a story based on Beowulf Shaeffer, Carlos Wu, and their two shared wives moving to Home after the resettlement. Do you have the four new books based around the Puppeteer Fleet Of Worlds (all co-authored with Edward M. Lerner)?
The execution for walking on the grass (the only Terran grass patch on Home, at the time) has been discussed in passing a number of times, however.
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TFA is very light on details but does list one reason:
While Dr. Huang did not bring up any ethical issues involved in taking organs from prisoners at the conference, he said that organ donations from prisoners were not ideal because rates of fungal and bacterial infection in prisoner organs were quite high, and affected the long-term survival rates of those who undergo the transplants.
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Execution in the US is too rare to make much of a dent in organ donation numbers. Under 50 executions took place in the last two years (source [deathpenaltyinfo.org]); in contrast, there's around 2000~2500 heart transplants in the US annually (see this page [infoplease.com] for more organs). As for China, from TFA,
Some human rights groups estimate that China puts to death thousands of prisoners annually, but official figures are a state secret, according to BBC correspondents.
Execution methods make a difference, as well... (Score:5, Informative)
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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...the usual method of execution is a bullet into the back of the head.
Better to declare the condemned executed, maintaining the body as long as possible until (and as) organs are needed and harvested. The donor would be unconscious for humanitarian reasons :-D
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Then you run into the issue of "do no harm" and the Hippocratic oath. You effectively make the doctor harvesting the organs the executioner.
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Solution: Have the official executioner cut the spinal column near the head, then wait two minutes, and call the doctor. Besides, the Hippocratic Oath is considered outdated in more and more places, especially where some of its clauses become inconvenient.
Do Chinese doctors take the "Hippocratic oath"? (Score:2)
And even if the USofA kills way fewer people than our bestest fwends in commie China, the exoneration rate for those lucky enough to get a review by the innocence project suggest that in the history of the "Land of the free" hundreds of wrongfully convicted/innocent have been KILLED, mostly to make a political point or make a career look "good".
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For some doctors, the reason they don't kill people is that the insurance company won't let them bill for that.
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...the usual method of execution is a bullet into the back of the head.
Better to declare the condemned executed, maintaining the body as long as possible until (and as) organs are needed and harvested. The donor would be unconscious for humanitarian reasons :-D
Morbid thought: what happens if/when they wake up?
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Apparently there's a movement to change [gavelife.org] the traditional lethal injection protocol to one which would leave the organs intact. Also, US executions by method [deathpenaltyinfo.org] since 1976: 1114 lethal injection, 157 electrocution, 11 gas chamber, 3 hanging, 3 firing squad.
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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.
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You seem to presume that all these people being execute were actual criminals rather than just political prisoners being executed and harvested for organs.
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Ignoring your early-onset psychopathy for the moment, I'll just note that the Chinese have a very strong cultural bias in favour of corpses being buried or cremated intact.
While not as prevalent in recent decaudes, there are still Westerners who also believe that (their) bodies must be buried whole.
BTW, I hope you're able to find some counseling soon.
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If you torture someone and they turn out to be innocent (wrongful conviction), or framed, you've just
A. Inflicted a horrible, irreversable punishment on a citizen. Most people who are tortured for extended periods of time, probably don't come out completely sane.
B. Given them licence for them to sue the state back into the stone age. (And really, what defense would the state have against that?)
Atleast with life imprisonment, you've essentially given someone their entire life to be found innocent, and freed.
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Re:first the shutdown of the banned terms (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:first the shutdown of the banned terms (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, the high rates of fungal and bacterial infections in prisoners suggest another ethical problem.
End visible ones, or halt all of them? (Score:2)
It would be nice if China's end to organ harvesting from executed prisoners was a believable measure, but there is too much saving of face in that country. Administrative costs and bribery in China, given that issue, would mean that 5 years leaves too much time and opportunity to cancel it(with political pressure) or time used to move it deeper away from public view.
If they're willing to pull all the stops to defend their own factories (a la Foxconn) to defend the indefensible, I'd imagine it'd not be some
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The cynical side of me says that we might see a rise in capital punishment rates to meet quotas before the ban comes into effect.
Honk if you Like Basic Human Rights (Score:2)
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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
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Mandatory organ donations is also barbaric because we stop seeing people as people and instead see them as sacks of meat and valuable organs. Rather than a doctor doing
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While I agree with the death penalty in theory for murder (and only for intentional murder)
Right, we should kill people who kill people, because killing people is wrong!
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While I agree with the death penalty in theory for murder (and only for intentional murder)
Right, we should kill people who kill people, because killing people is wrong!
Social contract: the taking of human life is only sanctioned for the government, except in very limited circumstances, ie (defense of self, others from imminent harm). Anyone who takes a life willingly and intentionally without sanctified authority is breaking the social contract and, by taking a life without legitimate authority or cause, forfeits their own right to life. Capital punishment is a punitive act for the individual, not a deterring act for society.
Will we see a growth of vigilantes? (Score:2)
Will we see a growth of vigilantes because of this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilante [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_squads [wikipedia.org]
One could see this as move to privatize the business, favoring an entrepreneurial attitude!
Very scary.
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Will we see a growth of vigilantes because of this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilante [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_squads [wikipedia.org]
One could see this as move to privatize the business, favoring an entrepreneurial attitude!
It seems to me if– in the presence of an established voluntary organ donation system, a society's organ supply is measurably affected by the withdrawal of killed prisoners' non-consensually harvested organs– that society is so morally bankrupt and dysfunctional, they need to reevaluate why they're bothering to extend lives with medicine in the first place.
Very scary.
Should the scenario I described comes to pass, I agree. On the other hand, living under an imperfect government that retains the authority to
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It seems to me if– in the presence of an established voluntary organ donation system, a society's organ supply is measurably affected by the withdrawal of killed prisoners' non-consensually harvested organs– that society is so morally bankrupt and dysfunctional, they need to reevaluate why they're bothering to extend lives with medicine in the first place.
Except that they would be too morally bankrupt to bother. Did the Germans end oven cremations because the Greens objected to the air pollution?
This word, "donations" (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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This word, "donations", I do not think it means what you think it means.
I agree. Will the government create a fair system that protects the life of the donor first and foremost? Will the system let doctors make the decisions, and ensure that all incentives encourage saving the patient, not harvesting organs? Will the rich and powerful be treated equally with the poor?
IMO we haven't accomplished this in the west, and I have less faith in China doing the right thing.
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This word, "donations", I do not think it means what you think it means.
I agree. Will the government create a fair system that protects the life of the donor first and foremost? Will the system let doctors make the decisions, and ensure that all incentives encourage saving the patient, not harvesting organs? Will the rich and powerful be treated equally with the poor?
IMO we haven't accomplished this in the west, and I have less faith in China doing the right thing.
Yes, what we really need in medicine is more muddle-headed thinking about "fairness", pejorative, conspiratorial notions of "harvesting", and class warfare.
Because, so far it has only accomplished the absolute ban on being compensated for parts of your body, effectively killing millions of transplant patients on waiting lists. Because, you know, it's far worse to condemn someone to death by bureaucracy, than for someone to be paid for their kidney. And the reasoning is pretty much what you presented: surgic
why ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, why?
The countries that have voluntary donation programs are in a constant shortage for most organs. Taking them from people who are dead only shocks us because of antiquated remainders of religious nonsense, and not even that is thought through very well (your soul apparently doesn't need your body, so why would it need some parts?).
People who get the death sentence have a very serious debt to society. Let's ignore for the moment whether or not you agree with what people in China get the death sentence for, or the death sentence in general. Even if you don't like it, you can not deny the reality.
If you have forfeit your life to society, then why not the parts that remain? It's not like you'd have any use for them, or that taking some organs out of a corpse would be any more evil, wrong or whatever than killing someone in the first place.
Re:why ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Are judges and jury members more likely to need organ transplants than anyone else? If not, it makes no sense to say there's a perverse incentive for them to order more executions; they have no more interest in it than the rest of the public does.
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Do judges and jury members want money?
FIFY. Too often the answer will be "yes" and the "perverse incentive" will exist.
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Increasing the supply of waiting organs increases the chance that they will find one for the judges or jurors. It is altruism, or a nasty sort.
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> You could just as well claim that donor cards make people drive less carefully and thus should be banned.
That analogy doesn't hold. A judge can be paid or pressured to deliver organs via death sentences. In contrast, having a donor card doesn't give you any incentive to driving carelessly.
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More assumptions.
I'm not saying you are wrong. I am saying you haven't shown that you are right.
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I'd go by the data that every potential form of abuse that exists has been used by a lot of politicians at every point in history.
The only way to ensure a minimum of a bad practice is to outright make it illegal or impossible via the law.
Example: Using eminent domain to seize private property and turn it over to land developers on the basis that the higher property taxes collected would be for the good of the people overall.
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You made the non sequitur that having a donor card makes you drive carelessly, without trying to argue for it. You can't just say that it is my job to prove the negative of your assumption.
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I'm asking for prove of your assumption. Don't pretend I speak chinese and it's not pretty clear what I'm saying.
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Well, let's list the assumptions
(1) Having more organs available for transplant benefits everyone but the prisoner, including the judge.
(2) Under the policy of harvesting executed prisoners' organs, more organs would be available.
These two assumptions are enough to establish there's a conflict of interest, and they're practically tautologies. The key is that they're not conditioned on the guilt of the defendant.
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The problem of too little organ donors in some countries could easily be solved with opting out systems. A lot of people are just too lazy to opt out. However a
Re:why ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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."
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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.
There's a million or so people waiting for donor organs in China right now. A thousand additional death sentences would cover less than 1%, and that's assuming every single one of them has multiple useable organs.
On the scale the government of China is concerned about, that's a rounding error, not an incentive.
And the reason the chinese prefer burrying their dead in one piece actually is religious superstition, some other comment laid out more details on that.
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."
Actually, I have spent several years understandi
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Actually, I have spent several years understanding religion
Sure, you have. If you can't understand an obvious moral problem such as involuntary organ harvesting, then I doubt you understand religion, even if you ever did burn a few years trying.
If I have the authority to kill you and harvest your extremely valuable organs, what keeps me from doing so? In an ethical society, we would have laws and punishments that keep me from doing so. In China, they don't have these and their government actually encourages this process.
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If you can't understand an obvious moral problem such as involuntary organ harvesting, then I doubt you understand religion
If an ethical problem, not a religious one. If you think the two are the same, you need to listen to less religious propaganda. In fact, most religions are famous for changing their ethics around based on what this centuries moral trends say.
If I have the authority to kill you and harvest your extremely valuable organs, what keeps me from doing so? In an ethical society, we would have laws and punishments that keep me from doing so. In China, they don't have these and their government actually encourages this process.
Evidence and I'll be with you. I see the potential abuse - but I also remember that I'm on a forum where in a different context, people strongly claim that guns don't kill people and malicious software is necessary (and interesting).
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religion is at its heart a moral code
That's the propaganda I was speaking about. Read "The Golden Bough", which everyone talking about religion should've read (the one-volume summary is fine, I don't know if the 12-volume full account is even available anymore) and if you're into some interesting, but largely hypothetical, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" is a fascinating read explaining one theory of the neurological sources of religion.
No, religion never came about to address moral wrongs. Not once in the
Re:why ? (Score:5, Informative)
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 [weeklystandard.com].
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Good narrative, and we all love naratives, but it doesn't deliver many new facts. Most importantly, not what you are alleging.
Since we can't make China a great place within a few days, how about accepting reality and then improving it, instead of wishing for some fancy lalaland?
I think TFA is spot-on: The practical issues happen to be the deciding factor. Funny how nobody said that in a response to my "why" so far (but it has been said in other comments). It's simple, straightforward, truthful and answers t
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Because it creates an incentive for killing people? When you can get a death sentence for almost anything in China, and when thousands get executed there every year some might start to wonder if the strict laws are there because it's cheaper to sell the organs of criminals than to keep them in prison. There are also rumors of barbaric practices where organs are harvested from still living bodies because they are of better quality.
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Assuming they deserved the death sentence in the first place. There are some pretty frivolous laws in this world that carry the death penalty, not to mention police corruption and wrongful convictions.
I get what you're saying, but it's worth keeping in mind that not all convictions are deserved.
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All unsolicited advertisement is spam
If it is wrong to advertise to someone without their solicitation or even permission, then should it not also be wrong to harvest that person's organs without their solicitation or even permission?
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People who get the death sentence have a very serious debt to society. Let's ignore for the moment whether or not you agree with what people in China get the death sentence for, or the death sentence in general. Even if you don't like it, you can not deny the reality.
The reality is, the death penalty is plain WRONG, and making it desirable or profitable in any shape or form is unethical at best.
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You were caught j-walking and the pretty princess prom queen needs a pair of kidneys due to a car accident where she swerved to miss a kitty cat. You are tried/convicted/sentenced to be executed and she gets your kidneys. Some overweight smoker gets your lungs and liver and the rest of you is dispensed as needed.
If you think the US is moral enough to not get caught up in that mess you may be right but I don't want to try it. Look at every other country and see if it would not be driven to excess. I'm surpri
Wow it's almost like they're in this century. (Score:2)
does is really make a difference? (Score:2)
What percentage of organs are actually from convicted felons ?
If the answer is "miniscule" then it makes sense to do whatever
pisses people off the least.
I, personally, am far more concerned about doctors declaring me dead
when I am "not dead yet".
So many chicks in life didn't want my organ . . . (Score:2)
. . . so I'll just keep all the rest of them when I am dead, just out of spite, thanks.
Are there any religious or cultural issues, that discourage folks in different countries from donating organs? Is there any ranking of organ donating cultures?
I wonder if.. (Score:2)
Donate my ass, how about you pay up. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
east vs west? (Score:2)
In Western Australia it has been suggest that all organs are harvested unless you say otherwise. interesting points of view.
It's not really a "donation" (Score:2)
It's not a "donation", when they kill you and take it from you.
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With so many China stories in the past couple of days, I'm starting to wonder if slashdot is becoming the US outlet for Xinhua news.
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Welcome to the global news, where crap from a country an ocean away from yours washes up on your evening news simply because that country is powerful and important to yours for political and economic reasons.
Uh, I'm talking european news including US stories, of course. Maybe.
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Farkdot isn't News for Nerds.
You must be old here.
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Because nerds don't read science fiction (i.e., Larry Niven)?
Sending criminals to the organ banks, and dropping the level of crime that gets one sent there, is the subject of a number of his stories. Also, I expect that the Chinese have Mother Hunts, another trophe from the pre-Kzin War period of Known Space.
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In China, most of the organs for transplantation are harvested on such condemned. It will take time to develop other means of obtaining them (considering the cultural reluctance, I do not think 5 years will be enough).
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You wouldn't accept a pledge from Santorum to stop beating his wife within 5 years.
That would rank among Santorum's least ideas.
Re:Five years?! (Score:5, Insightful)