China Plans To Stop Harvesting Organs From Executed Prisoners 200
cold fjord writes "The People's Republic of China continues its long march toward liberalization with two steps forward (And one+ step back?). The BBC reports, 'A senior Chinese official has said the country will phase out the practice of taking organs from executed prisoners from November. Huang Jiefu said China would now rely on using organs from voluntary donors under a new national donation system. Prisoners used to account for two-thirds of transplant organs, based on previous estimates from state media. For years, China denied that it used organs from executed prisoners, but admitted it a few years ago... Human rights groups estimate that China executes thousands of prisoners a year, but correspondents say that the official figures remain a state secret.'"
Don't we all (Score:3)
I plan to stop drawing water from my well, once it runs dry.
I have a suspicion that the "voluntary donor program" means "we're going to shoot you anyway, but we won't charge your family for the bullet if you volunteer to let us harvest your organs."
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No, it actually means: "You are going to die, would you rather be executed or undergo a medical procedure?"
Their hosts actually made it sound appealing (Score:2)
How would you like to earn money while you're inside, doing
absolutely nothing?
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How would you like to earn money while you're inside, doing
absolutely nothing?
So this is the meaning of those youtube spam messages on every video that claim, "earn money at home while doing nothing".
I hear they're outsourcing it... (Score:2)
The US Govt is going to pick this up, just in time for the elections.
I'm sure the Prison Corporations will be in favor; as well as all the greedy politicians.
It's not like it's legal, or anything, but Really; when has that stopped them from doing something?
Welcome to the New World Order; where you ARE Fries with that.
Re:I hear they're outsourcing it... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, all hyperbole aside, my thoughts were "why are they stopping this and why aren't WE in the US doing this?"
It sounds like a great idea. If someone is going to die anyway, after exhausting the judicial system (again speaking for the US), why waste these organs that could go to help the many people on the waiting lists?
It seems a waste to lose such a vital resource that could help the lives of many innocent people.
Most people are on death row for taking lives unjustly (premeditated murder, etc), why not use this as a method for them to give life to others?
Seems like it would balance out the karma in life a bit, no?
Re:I hear they're outsourcing it... (Score:5, Insightful)
We could always amend the Constitution, but while I enjoy Larry Niven's Known Space stories, I wouldn't like to give government an incentive to harvest the organs of citizens. Look at for-profit prisons, which already have a large and powerful lobby. Imagine an organ-trading industry, always hungry for fresh meat.
And since there's no such thing as "karma", no, that's not a good reason either.
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Taking life-saving organs that would otherwise rot and be wasted from a sack of dead meat = cruelty? To the dead meat?
By the way, while wasteful, shooting a dead cow hung on a hook in a warehouse cannot be called 'animal cruelty', due to the same distinction.
Granted, if a corpse is to be frozen so that it can one day be repaired and revived, that's a different matter. ...hmm, and by default, perhaps organs would automatically be part of a person's estate, for relatives to sell (after paying inheritance tax
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"People who take lives and have forfeited theirs "
so all the soldier should die?
"(if you agree with the idea of capital punishment in the first place"
I don't anymore. With what we know about the brain no one should. That said, if we are going to have it then it need to meet an even higher bar.
" "cruel and unusual.""
How can you be "cruel and unusual." to a dead person?
A common misunderstanding of karma (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually "karma" means "action" or deed", and the core concept is that the entire cause-and-effect cycle is a single inherently inseparable thing, and when you "create" a cause, you are simultaneously creating all of it's effects. It's somewhat analogous to the concept "you reap what you sow". But in it's originating culture it's a concept fundamental enough to have its own dedicated word. And a nice short one at that - those tend to be culturally important.
The whole religious "spiritual economy", "you deserve what you get and/or are paying in advance for something great" thing is a cultural thing that grew up around that. I suspect that since for many cases "what goes around comes around" is closely analogous it becomes a convenient place for corrupt priests to hang the old "pie in the sky when you die" trick.
Your own post espouses the concept - it's not the organ harvesting itself that is the problem, in fact that part seems rather benign to me - get as much good as possible out of this evil. The problem is the the potential consequences that can grow out of it, the perverse incentives it puts in place. "Crime is dropping and we have a shortage of organs? Well let's just retroactively lower the bar a bit as to what constitutes a capital offense, problem solved." That's not necessarily how things would go down, but if you build the system and it is eventually corrupted then the horrors it perpetrates will be in part your doing. Your karma. The responsible being tries to look at least a few steps ahead and create consequences whose net balance is as desirable as possible (by their personal standards) - to create good karma.
Anyway, as a fellow SF fan I imagine you have a taste for the long vision and thought I'd do my part to share a source of real wisdom I've encountered. Those crazy old Eastern mystics and philosophers were actually pretty on the ball: they managed to take a deeply empowering perspective on our relationship with the cosmos and refine it into a "religion" to guide and shape individuals and society in productive ways, without ever invoking any sort of Authority beyond the individual. Even their rules for Acolytes are a very practical affair: "doing these things will disrupt your training, don't ask the Master to guide you if you're unwilling to follow". Don't let the New Age folks scare you off, every movement has it's groupies. And as groupies go the New Agers tend to be among the most friendly, tolerant, and generous folks you could hope to meet, which I think speaks well of the core philosophy.
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I would look at it a different way. I do not believe that human rights would be only a part of the reason. Another important reason is that the situation is exploitable. How would you like to be accused of doing something you did not do (a set up) and be given a death sentence, and then your organs are harvested? There are always a loop hole in laws, and laws are not always right. As a result, the false positive cases could intentionally be the exploitation of the system (organ harvest). That said, to me, i
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Err..how is that cruel and inhumane? They are dead when you harvest the organs, they feel no pain then.
No one is saying to harvest the organs while they're still alive [youtube.com]
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Then why stop at harvesting organs? Why not use the dead as food? Why bother following a person's will, and just let the living do what they want with a person's estate?
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not exactly talking about people with estates or wills. unless you want to count "my cigarette stash, and the toilet distillery"
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thank you. for that i bequeth you my toothbrush shiv
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Then why stop at harvesting organs? Why not use the dead as food?
I wouldn't consider it morally wrong to eat the dead, assuming that the rights of the person weren't violated while they were alive. There are several practical reasons why doing so is a bad idea, of course, but "that hunk of flesh used to be a person" really isn't one of them.
Why bother following a person's will, and just let the living do what they want with a person's estate?
That's actually a valid question. My response is that you follow someone's will because the living have made a promise to do so. Keeping your word is important (or, at least, it should be); regardless of whether or not the person y
The death penalty is a little different there (Score:5, Informative)
Are you seriously wondering why they are stopping?
You seem to be laboring under the mistaken belief that the death penalty is the same there as it is here. In China, they routinely execute political dissidents, politically-active members of disfavored minority groups, thieves, embezzlers, etc. Any trial that occurs is rather perfunctory. Yes, there are your typical death-row murderers and rapists too, but the high-volume organ supply comes from political prisoners, as they are easier to "warehouse" due to being less violent. They have their blood tested after arrest, and then are executed when a customer requires an organ.
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That's a great reason to stop killing but if the are doing it anyways, i seems wasteful.
"They have their blood tested after arrest, and then are executed when a customer requires an organ."
haha. You need to stop listening to the crazy train.
It's not "crazy train" (Score:2)
The Guardian (not exactly a sensational tabloid) had an article about this not too long ago. It included an extensive interview with a doctor that participated.
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Re:I hear they're outsourcing it... (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like a great idea.
So do private prisons. Conflict of interest, anyone? "We need more organs!" "OK, we'll make up some sentences."
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Actually, all hyperbole aside, my thoughts were "why are they stopping this and why aren't WE in the US doing this?"
Trial-periods and time spent in prison before execution is much shorter in China.
In China, the verdict is usually "final" on the spot and execution follows swiftly.
Most inmates in the US and Europe probably have some sort of infectious disease (from sharing needles, drugs, etc.pp.) that they acquired in the years waiting for the verdict and the appeal and the appeal to the appeal....
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Having a voluntary system is one thing, as long as it is genuinely 100% voluntary.
The issue with any other system is that it offers a perverse incentive to execute more people. It is also immoral in my opinion to treat other people as your property to do with as you please, even in death.
Ignoring deeper ethics questions it'd also be pretty pointless. Very fe
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Because the typical execution of prisoners in America poisons all the organs....
And the fact that they usually sit in prison for 10 - 30 years waiting for the execution (puts a lot of miles on what may have once been healthy young viable organs)
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Lol it's bad enough that black people are already disproprotionately executed. Now you want to add a financial incentive to the for-profit prison model by harvesting organs? What could go wrong?
"Whhhhhhhhhat? You're telling me we could be getting paid for executing black people? Where do I sign up?!"
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Geez, some people have to play the fucking RACE card at every turn of every conversation.....
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Actually, all hyperbole aside, my thoughts were "why are they stopping this and why aren't WE in the US doing this?"
It seems like, if you're going to kill people anyway, that there shouldn't be a problem with this. The problem is, are you really going to kill the people anyway? Sure, it might start out that way. Pretty soon though, appeals for prisoners awaiting execution are going to be influenced by arguments that their organs could be saving lives. Same for the criminal trials in the first place. Same with the laws and mandatory criminal penalties, etc. It wouldn't take long for it to become like traffic tickets or ci
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why? because we actually execute so few people in the US. death row inmates are more likely to die of old age, and ironically have a longer life expectency than those given the big LWP (life without parole...in large part due to death row inmates being held seperately from the rest of the population).
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No, but having your DNA turn out all over a crime scene you've never been near of because you happen to be compatible with the head investigators sick daughter might. That's something to consider before applauding a scheme that gives the state an incentive to execute as many people as it can. Karma oves irony.
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my thoughts were "why are they stopping this and why aren't WE in the US doing this?"
Because people like you are lying hypocrites whom claim to want this but then turn around and behave like you don't want it.
Want proof? Ok, I, as someone upset at you, verbally claim you are a rapist and a murderer with no proof what so ever.
Now that that part is out of the way, you now exactly match the type of person who should be killed for their organs. You just stated people, such as yourself now, deserve to be put to death and your organs given to those who accused them.
I do fully expect you to hand
Sorry (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry but morales aside. Why not harvest organs like this that can't be harvested from volunteers (without them dying). Go China.
Flame on
Re:Sorry (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry but morales aside. Why not harvest organs like this that can't be harvested from volunteers (without them dying). Go China.
Flame on
Two problems:
1. It creates a perverse incentive to execute more people.
2. It creates a negative stigma for organ donors.
Getting people to volunteer as organ donors, or even as blood donors, is a big problem in China. Volunteerism is not part of their culture, and giving up part of your body is considered a desecration. Even in America, Asian-Americans, and Chinese in particular, donate organs, and donate blood, at very low rates.
I donate blood every eight weeks, and my Chinese wife always objects. She insists that I am shortening my life, even though there is plenty of evidence that blood donations are actually good for you [wikipedia.org].
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I thought that when you gave blood only the bad humours were drained out. You should explain that to your wife.
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Have a guy at work with that attitude.
He refuses to give blood, when asked he says "What have they done for me?".
Never really understood since with blood you're constantly making more of it. It's not like giving up a kidney that will affect you for the rest of your life and you can only do once. Not giving blood is just going to have some of it go to waste eventually; most common worst case is you feel lethargic the rest of the day and need to eat some extra calories/sugar.
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I agree. How in the world can the original poster say that this is two steps forward? Using organs from executed prisoners is a great idea!
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Why exclude Morales? I understand that she felt nothing.
Re:Sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
Society should work hard to avoid making prisoners criminals.
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Or maybe AC didn't mean jus
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I think he meant the latter.
Let us test this new drug, and if you live. But I think at that point we kinda get into the issues of ethically causing harm to living people.
Um, why? (Score:2, Insightful)
That is an excellent idea. On top of that, I'd harvest a kidney from everyone with a life sentence or on death row.
Re:Um, why? (Score:4, Informative)
I have no information on the validity of those stories, but once you grant people power there will be those who abuse it. If you don't know it, The Stanford prison experiment [wikipedia.org] may horrify you. There is a reason some experiments are not repeated. These were normal people.
The Milgram experiment [wikipedia.org] is repeated, although the implications are about as shocking. The psychological damage to the test subjects is less though.
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Don't confuse people with facts. This is slashdot.
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It is also similar to the Prison-Industrial complex in the USA. It is profitable for private companies to imprison people, so lobby for more laws to imprison more people. Except in China the ??? step is "then kill them and harvest organs", before proceeding to profit.
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There are many stories about Bigfoot as well.
And you need to try to understand the studies you link to.
The Stanford experiment was a 6 day experiment with very few people that the person doing the experiment participate in. It is, in no way, a valid study.
The horror is that he didn't go to prison.
The milgarm experiment link is incorrect:
". He found that the percentage of participants who are prepared to inflict fatal voltages remains remarkably constant, 61–66 percent, regardless of time or place.[9][
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Hmm? I'm pretty sure the Milgram experiment was exactly an investigation into the limits to the power of authority. The fact that if joe random tells people to administer a high voltage to someone, they don't do it - well that's not really a surprise. The surprising thing and the reason the experiment is famous is that simply dressing the guy in a lab coat and changing how the instructions are given resulted in people do it at way higher rates than anyone would have expected.
I'll go ahead and say it (Score:5, Insightful)
If these prisoners were serial killers, rapists, murderers and other assorted bad guys, then I fully support using their organs to save lives. I find it poetic justice and a very fitting end for the life of a person who (possibly) killed so many others.
If these prisoners are political prisoners sentenced to death because they were at Tiannamen Square or oppose communism, then I welcome the end of such barbaric policies.
Re:I'll go ahead and say it (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem, of course, is that once a government has this power, the government is the one able to decide who qualifies as a "serious criminal".
A non-violent revolutionary is much more dangerous (to the state) than a murderer.
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The problem, of course, is that once a government has this power, the government is the one able to decide who qualifies as a "serious criminal".
A non-violent revolutionary is much more dangerous (to the state) than a murderer.
Ummmm... somehow I don't think it'll come to a balancing act between criminal/revolutionary... for the simple reason the emergency degree is given by the compatibility with the comrade(s) on the transplant waiting list.
Re:I'll go ahead and say it (Score:4, Insightful)
The whole 'execution' phase seems like the place where the ethical problems would reside.
Re:I'll go ahead and say it (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a complicating factor: China Admits Selling Prisoners’ Organs [go.com]
When the state can profit from your death, safeguards are weak, and charges that can lead to a death sentence are a trivial problem....
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Many Chinese believe that their bodies are given to them by their parents, so they should look after them. Losing your organs is considered part of the punishment.
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I have no moral dilemma with executing the worst criminal offenders. Charles Manson, Hitler, Stalin, Bin Laden, the world (is/would be) a better place without them in it. But I do not want to execute people who's only crime is exercising their God-given rights, like freedom, liberty, expressing an opinion. Being politically inconvenient to an oppressive communist regime is not a crime worthy of execution. Murdering 29 people and wearing their skin as clothing is.
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Murdering 29 people and wearing their skin as clothing is.
What about murdering one person and burning his crocs?
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He was wearing Crocs. It was a public service. The person who killed him, and burned the crocs should get a parade.
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It's very deeply related.
This news means China is going to give up some of the economic incentive for executing them. Over time, this should cause a reduction in executions as a side-effect.
(This should not be true of the justice system under discussion were completely free of corruption. So, you should absolutely take my assertions with a grain of salt at least proportional to the degree to which you consider China's
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A big part of finding justice in the courtroom is the removal of motivations for denying justice. We saw in the US that for-profit prisons caused some judges to trade guilty verdicts for kick-backs. And if the profit also includes the possibility of human organs the motivation would be greater still. The consequences for crime certainly should be a temporary burden on the criminal, but allowing anyone to profit from a conviction is very dangerous to justice.
The real long-term solution for organ replaceme
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The real long-term solution for organ replacement is direct fabrication of the desired organ. And we aren't all that far off from that.
Ummm... define your expectation for "far"... my back-of-napkin optimistic calculations: 10 years to maturity+5-6 years FDA or other approvals + 20 years for the patents to expire and competition in the market to kick in.
Re:I'll go ahead and say it (Score:5, Insightful)
If these prisoners were serial killers, rapists, murderers and other assorted bad guys, then I fully support using their organs to save lives. I find it poetic justice and a very fitting end for the life of a person who (possibly) killed so many others.
If these prisoners are political prisoners sentenced to death because they were at Tiannamen Square or oppose communism, then I welcome the end of such barbaric policies.
You, sir, just hit the head on the nail with why this kind of thing is a problem. As soon as you say "well, everyone has rights, except for *those people*, you end up creating a line. When you create that line, you also create the need for someone to determine who ends up on which side of that line. And as soon as you do that, you give someone the power to take rights away from someone else. That always ends poorly; this is why the Constitution of the United States refers to rights as being "inalienable," or, in other words, irrevocable by man. Technically, "inalienable" means "Not subject to sale or transfer; inseparable."
Once people are given the ability to take basic rights away, invariably at some point, that power will be abused. It just works out that way, and has done so in history over and over and over again. The problem isn't about when it's some serial killer/rapist who is gladly donating a spare kidney because he's genuinely sorry for all the harm he's done and at least wants to do something decent; that's like having weather alerts for nice days. The problem is how the system can be abused. Even more to the point, the system WAS abused, widely and profoundly, in China, which is why this is a story to begin with, in exactly the way you describe on the last line of your post. That's exactly my point.
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I mostly agree, except for one point. Once someone is convicted of a felony crime, they do loose certain rights. In the US, they loose the right to vote, own a firearm, most of their 4th and 5th amendment protections, etc. While I am not opposed to revoking the 2nd amendment rights of someone convicted of armed robbery, I am opposed to revoking someone's 2nd amendment rights because they are "politically inconvenient".
Do you notice the parallels to this issue and the NSA snooping (not to go off topic).
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If a right can be forfeit, then it's no longer a right - it's a privilege. In a democracy, the ability to vote has to be one of THE fundamental rights that can never be taken away. Otherwise, you end up with the situation the US currently sees where large chunks of people are disenfranchised, and the government loses its claim to be representative of its citizens.
Whether you firearm ownership is a fundamental right, a secondary right that must yield to other more fundamental rights in a conflict, or a pr
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If the justice system were truly blind, then I too would be okay with the organs of executed prisoners being used. It's simply the practical thing to do, after all.
The problem is that it's not, and what this does is incentivize the execution of criminals (or, as the case may be, "criminals"), even if execution isn't warranted (whether or not it is ever warranted is outside the scope of this comment), since their death provides benefits to others. Those are exactly the sorts of things that you don't want to
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If these prisoners were serial killers, rapists, murderers and other assorted bad guys, then I fully support using their organs to save lives. I find it poetic justice and a very fitting end for the life of a person who (possibly) killed so many others.
If these prisoners are political prisoners sentenced to death because they were at Tiannamen Square or oppose communism, then I welcome the end of such barbaric policies.
Here's the issue: it would be a remarkable coincidence to find a murderer that just happens to match the tissue type of the local party official's cousin, who is in desperate need of a new liver.
But finding a random prisoner who happens to be a match, and then afterwards absolutely coincidentally discovering that he's connected to some unsolved murder that's been sitting around in the cold case file?
Might turn out to be remarkably more likely.
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Murder is an action that is morally objectionable. The definition of the word means the unjustified killing of someone. It is not my standard, I didn't create it. That standard is present in every religion and moral philosophy and I would argue that 99% of the world agrees killing someone for no reason is wrong.
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IT means:
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human, and generally this premeditated state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide (such as manslaughter). A person who commits murder is called a murderer
not unjustified.
two really different things.
"99% of the world agrees killing someone for no reason is wrong."
Not in practice. It's trivial to get any believer to agree to that murder is OK.
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are you actually that eager to carve up other people into spare parts? Do you want to live in a society that does that?
I must say, I am shocked at the number of people posting here who support China's policy. Is there a sudden flood of postings from Texas high-school students, or something? I haven't seen this much sociopathy on display since someone tried to defend the execution of Islamic apostates a few months ago.
Every time one of these arguments comes up, I end up even more firmly convinced that we s
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I must say, I am shocked at the number of people posting here who support China's policy. Is there a sudden flood of postings from Texas high-school students, or something?
Supporting China's policy of using the organs of executed people does not imply support for the death penalty.
I oppose both for different reasons, but can easily see how someone else could oppose the death penalty, grudgingly accept that until things change it is going to happen whether they like it or not, and thus support not being wasteful with the organs of the condemned.
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I completely support someone who kidnaps 3 women, makes those women his slaves, rapes and abuses them over the course of 10 years [foxnews.com]getting the death penalty. If that person's organs save lives, then even better.
There are categories of crimes that the general population finds especially heinous, and I would rather the offenders of those crimes get a needle in the arm, and their organs save the lives of others, than pay $70,000 a year for them to live in a cell with cable TV, microwave, and free college cours
Make that 2n steps back (Score:2)
Not good: China Takes Aim at Western Ideas [nytimes.com]
Everyone a donor (Score:4, Insightful)
I was surprised to learn that where I live, everyone is automatically considered an organ donor. The doctors can takes organs from my body when I die, even if my family object. If you object, you have to sign an opt-out.
Great system actually. The only way to avoid the horror stories of people being kidnapped for organs or, worse, the poor selling their organs, is to ensure there are enough donated organs available. A lot of people don't care about losing their organs after death, but requiring people to opt-in means that most just don't bother.
There were just two problems with China's policy. One is that the organs were given to the ruling class, rather than being distributed on a basis of need. The other is that it encourages judgements and policies which increase the number of people sentenced to death.
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Are any US states opt-out versus opt-in? Every state I have living in is opt-in. If we made most places opt-out, it seems like it would greatly increase the supply.
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> The other is that it encourages judgements and policies which increase the number of people sentenced to death.
Well... probably not. Even in China, the wheels of justice turn at a glacial pace relative to organ-transplant timelines. Organ transplantation has timeframes measured in weeks... at most, a few months... from establishment of need to actual organ harvest. If you needed a lung transplant & had to wait for someone with matching compatible genotype to get arrested, convicted, and executed, y
Re:Everyone a donor (Score:4, Insightful)
China's policy *starts* once a prisoner is already on death row... they're genotyped, then kept alive until recipients are found for their organs. The system mostly works well, because it eliminates the rush to perform a transplant on short notice and the dependency on local availability. They can schedule the execution, harvesting, and transplant well in advance, and have everyone in place & ready to go before the prisoner gets executed... The *real* ethical problem
Holy shit, you think the fact that the victims may not actually deserve their fate is the only ethical problem? How about keeping people alive in detention indefinitely with the promise that eventually, one day, they'll be killed for their organs? That's fucking goulish, and far crueler than simply executing them immediately.
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The only people I've met who are scared by corruption or psychopaths in the health care system are people in countries where it's privatised.
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Fortunately that example doesn't really happen.
You're dying an you are match for said girl, AND the reason you are dying will leave the organ savable? AND you are going to die over a period long enough to get tested, but not so long you are going to save, AND the donor is prepped? AND the Dr. knows you're opt in? AND there is a transportation process set up for your organ? AND you're family won't sue?
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It was a better explanation than "The doctors are just twirling their waxed Dick Dastardly mustaches and mua-ha-ha-ha-haing over letting another poor sod die so they can harvest his organs to save some other poor sod!"
As a surgeon, you'll be in situations where you do have to make these kinds of decisions in real life. You're in the operating room after a major natural disaster or plane crash or Virginia Tech biannual shooting, 15 37 or 211 people come in all with fatal injuries. You have to triage them.
some horror stories struggle to scare (Score:2)
The local laws here require approval from three doctors with no connection to the recipient, the "donor" and who will have no role in the transplant operations. (In urgent cases, two doctors is enough.) A report has to be made, saying how death was established and that has to be kept on file for ten years.
I think that's as much as one can expect be done to safeguard against such corruption.
Also, the hospitals here are government funded, even the "private" ones, so there's more transparency and accountabil
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On the other side of the spectrum the opt-out system has its own share of horror stories: doctors not doing their best to save certain people and pronouncing them dead, because the patient's organs are compatible with someone on the waiting list who offered a sizable bribe.
Are any of those horror stories actually true though? Or even plausible? It seems like it would be really, really, really hard to get the timing right.
Everyone a recipient (Score:2)
Oh.
I'm not a scientist or an engineer.
No organ transplants for me in your world.
(Health or lifestyle is already taken into account. Mentally handicapped people get kidney transplants ahead of heavy drinkers. That's the case in Ireland at least. I don't know exactly how the scoring system is devised.)
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So instead, we only have to worry about hospitals purposely letting you die so they can harvest your organs. If you object, please tell me how this can be avoided.
In the US, if a doctor deliberately lets you die so the hospital can harvest your organ, we call that "malpractice" and quite possibly "murder", and there are legal remedies for both of those offenses. In China, if the government executes someone and harvests his organs, it's called "preserving social stability", and there is no legal remedy beca
How many was that again? (Score:2)
"Human rights groups estimate that China executes thousands of prisoners a year, but correspondents say that the official figures remain a state secret."
non-Google translation:
"Nobody knows -- not even the Chinese government -- how many prisoners are executed each year...
Bad luck. (Score:2)
I wonder if recipients know where the organs are coming from. In my experience I'd expect them to be a bit wary about the source of those organs, what with the way they worry about bad luck, karma and all that.
lip service? (Score:2)
are they actually planning to stop harvesting or are they just saying this to return to their previous state of denial? perhaps they devised a scheme to harvest organs covertly. if the bodies of the executed start(?) being cremated then it's plausible deniability.
Lexx (Score:2)
Am I the only one who though of the Lexx [wikipedia.org] after reading this?
Just need new spin ... (Score:3)
All you need is better spin and propaganda.
Are we supposed to believe they're just going to stop doing this completely?
Or will they just come up with a new way to spin it -- "Comrade Yang, in contrition for his terrible crime of jaywalking has volunteered to be euthenized and have his organs harvested. He hopes the glorious People's Republic will accept his noble sacrifice as atonement for his transgressions." Forcing someone to sign the paperwork probably isn't that tough when you can get away with anything in secret and threaten people's families.
And then they'll be right back where they are now, but with better PR.
I'd like to think China is going to halt the practice. But in reality, it's probably quite lucrative, and power once held is seldom given up.
I suspect citizens waiting for a healthy organ (Score:2, Insightful)
The execution vans will keep running (Score:2)
Math, fuckers (Score:2)
>> China executes thousands of prisoners a year
>> Prisoners used to account for two-thirds of transplant organs
Based on the math, organs are donated by volunteers five-hundreds of times per year. I think this low voluntary number speaks more to the social problems in China.
Re: (Score:3)
Off with your head!
Re: (Score:2)