Something I’ve blogged on elsewhere has re-emerged into the news with a new report out of some country called “Canada.”
Study: China’s Army Harvesting Body Parts From Live Prisoners, Particularly Falun Gong Members
Like many civilian hospitals in rural China, military hospitals turned to selling organs to make up for government funding cuts in the 1980s, the report said.
But military personnel could operate with much more secrecy, it said.
“Recipients often tell us that even when they receive transplants at civilian hospitals, those conducting the operation are military personnel,’’ the report said.
Hospitals in Canada’s biggest cities  Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto  confirmed “a substantial number’’ of Canadians had travelled to China for dubious organ transplants, Kilgour said.
“We’re in the three digits, up over 100 (from Canada each year), and the trend is accelerating,’’ Matas said.
To curb what they called a “disgusting form of evil,” the pair asked pharmaceutical firms to stop selling organ anti-rejection drugs to China.
They also asked countries to post travel advisories warning about China’s alleged organ harvest, asked states to cease offering follow-up care for patients who had dubious organ transplants in China and asked foreign doctors to cut ties with their Chinese counterparts [heh; emphasis mine] suspected of such practices.
The authors said states should enact legislation to ban citizens from traveling to China for organ transplants from unwilling donors, although they admitted that such cases would be difficult to prosecute.
Secret political prisons, lack of habeas corpus, torture, military-industrial complex unchecked, forced removal of organs.
At least their executioners make house calls.
Comparative news coverage? What planet am I living on? Dude, I must be high.
Senate Spelling Bee
Today Senator Robert Byrd (WV-Jackass) advanced to the second round by spelling the notoriously difficult compound word:
The Senator’s aides were ecstatic, claiming that “this demonstration disproves the hogwash rumors that the Senator is losing his wits in his old age.” A GOP source, who wished to remain anonymous, claimed that the Senator was still a F-U-C-K-H-E-A-D.
Herpes gladiatorum — commonly known as mat herpes because wrestlers are particularly susceptible—is caused by contact with the same common herpes simplex virus that produces cold sores.
Sheesh. In my day, we wrestled right through it:
Collins: Coach! I can’t see!
Coach: Suck it up, Collins! I ain’t gonna mollycoddle you just because you’re blind!
This just in: Peggy Noonan liked, admired Reagan
Chinese display sensitivity over pigs, celebrates multi-ethnic society. Or do they?
It’s difficult to find an activity on the PRC in which the PLA doesn’t have a finger, if I can use that expression without being accused of insensitivity.
Mind you, speaking of organ transplants, anyone care to join me in a whip-round to buy Amanda a budget class ticket to China?
She can get penis enlargement here, furriskey!
But she can get penis enlargement surgery here, furriskey! Besides, how do you think she’d feel knowing she’d gotten parts from some kind of religious kook?
Oh, there’s my comment.
Enlargement? What use is enlargement? Using my strategem, she could have a whole array of penises. Then she would stand out from the crowd, even in North Carolina.
It’s just that enlargement is so useful for cockslapping. But yes, I see the merit of your suggestion.
There’s plenty of habeas corpus, just of a more literal sort.
But I hear the operations cost an arm and a leg.
Parts is parts.
I don’t know. I think a lot of aftermarket vendors are fly-by-night.
I hear Ted Kennedy’s on his third dissident’s liver. It’s like Argentinian canned beef. It’s yummy, but ya gotta wonder if you’ve read any of its poetry…
El Cid Brand Argentinian Canned Beef, the Caballero of Canned Beef.
I will admit to feeling uncomfortable whenever I drive past a hospital in China.
But then the thought of being in a traffic accident in Bangkok or Bombay also fills me with terror. Some people carry bags of their own blood around with them, but that seems a bit like expecting Amanda to carry a condom ‘just in case’.
tw perform31. hmm. Don’t know that one.
But…but… Abu Ghraib? Hey, at least they are in favor of allowing Iran to get nuclear weapons.
TW: Where’s there’s a will58, there’s a Communist Court to overturn it and command seizure of all familial assets…
/wondering how they let Yao Ming get away…
I’m pretty sure Abu Ghraib was about the forced insertion of organs.
Whatever.
Yeah, but an hour after having a Chinese organ transplant, you want to have another again
This is great news! I really, really need a third arm. Gotta run–I need to book my flight to China.
Now, now. You’re just demonizing the other.
It’s not organ harvesting, but actually organ recycling. Leave it to the Chinese to advance recycling well beyond the manufacturing or industrial phase, they’ve “humanized†it. Take that Al Gore, who needs Kyoto when you can have your own localized killing fields! FOR THE CHILDREN… I mean… FROM THE CHILDREN!!!!
The Falun Gong propaganda David Kilgour’s promoting has been discredited by multiple undercover investigations.
US government and Chinese dissident investigations:
1) Link (section CRS-7)
Link
2) Link
Link
3) Link (page 3)
As you can see, the hospital Falun Gong accused is partly owned by a Malaysian health care company and is subject to oversight beyond Chinese authority.
Falun Gong propaganda David Kilgour’s promoting has been discredited by multiple undercover investigations.
US government and Chinese dissident investigations:
1) Link (section CRS-7)
Link
2) Link
Link
3) Link (page 3)
As you can see, the hospital Falun Gong accused is partly owned by a Malaysian health care company and is subject to oversight beyond Chinese authority.
Raw URLs break the page. Please use the http:// button.
thanks for fixing them. sorry about the double click.
Charles–
If it turns out to be incorrect, then my apologies. However, if there are a rash of rejection episodes among Canadians who’ve recently travelled to China, it brings up certain questions that need further investigation. After all, the secret American torture prisons for al-Qaeda suspects abroad weren’t identified either, were they?
Yes, let’s propose that people who can’t get life-saving organs such as livers, kidneys, and hearts die rather than take advantage of their one available opportunity to live.
Organs aren’t exactly widely available, folks. The Chinese government, despicable as it is, is some people’s last, best, and only hope to save their lives.
For us in the West, we need to change our own policies to make sure more organs are available. First, make selling of body parts legal. Next, do other things to make more organs available (my idea: no motorcycle helmet or seatbelt = organ donor in event of emergency.) We’ve created a black market here, resulting in profitable markets overseas.
Again, I wouldn’t be comfortable knowing my heart or liver came from a political prisoner in China. But I might have no choice, since in this country (and most of the West) only medical professionals are allowed to profit from the harvesting and replanting of organs. I know there are good reasons for this to be the policy, but the prisons in China are filled with reasons to scrap it.
jon, you realize that this “one available opportunity to live” often includes ending another life, don’t you? Would you be willing to take that opportunity knowing that it involves organs forcibly removed from an unwilling donor?
I wouldn’t. Imagine the karma attached to that…
You absolutely wouldn’t let someone die (they’ve already been sentenced) to save yourself? I can’t necessarily say I would do it for myself, but if it was my only hope if, for instance, my two-year-old swallowed a bottle of Advil and got liver failure, I might.
I’d rather he have a liver with bad karma than one that doesn’t work. And with their hard-to-get status, I’m not able to condemn those who pursue such things on a twisted version of a free market. We can pretend everything is fine here, all the people consented and all, but there are many things we could do to alleviate both our problem with finding organs and this reprehensible market in China too. There are two fucked up systems at play here, and I’d like to change ours and undermine theirs. Win-win, no?
And for what crimes do the ChiComs sentence people to death? Things like, oh let’s see … political dissent?
Jon–
Is your last name “Swift”, by any chance?
If so, bravo. If not, thanks for signing the donor card, Eric Idle will be by shortly to remove your spleen and seduce your wife.
Or are you Michael J. Fox? His arguments are quite similar in form.
US Doctor; “Oh. My God!! We have 32 patients in need of a liver transplant.”
Chinese prison guard; “What a coincidence! We happen to have 32 condemned prisoners with perfectly healthy livers.”
See how that works Jon.
This is too funny. Larry Niven postulated a society where jaywalking was a capital crime because of the constant need for organs for transplant, and hey, they’re just criminals, aren’t they?
“Organlegging,” kidnapping a person and breaking up their body for parts, and selling them was a criminal specialty.
We need to get over our obsession with living as long as we possibly can. It’s unhealthy.
How about:
US Doc: “Sorry bud, there aren’t any.”
Patient: “Bummer, if only the free market could help my situation.”
Doc: “Funny you should mention it, but an unfree market police state might be your best shot at a long life.”
And everyone’s obsessed with others’ obsessions for a long life. I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve seen some people with some pretty fucked up livers (I work at a prison filled with too many HepC and HIV carriers), so I’m not about to say that I would want to wait around to die if there was a chance of living longer.
Again, I’m not sure I’d go to China to get an organ, but I’m not presently in need of such a thing. I think China has an evil regime going over there, but, just as various fucked up Middle Eastern and South American dictatorial and pseudo-dictatorial states have a lot of that oil we need, China has a lot of stuff we can’t seem to do without (cheap toys, cheap steel, available female infant orphans, and organs.)
So you don’t draw the line at murder?