Posted on 11/21/2006 7:14:00 PM PST by Coleus
After years of denial, China has acknowledged that most of the human organs used in transplants here are taken from executed prisoners and that many of the recipients are foreigners who pay hefty sums to avoid a long wait.
Speaking at a conference of surgeons in the southern city of Guangzhou, Deputy Health Minister Huang Jiefu called for a strict code of conduct and better record-keeping to stem China's thriving illegal organ trade, state media reported.
"Apart from a small portion of traffic victims, most of the organs from cadavers are from executed prisoners," Huang said Tuesday, according to a report Thursday in the English-language China Daily newspaper.
"The current big shortfall of organ donations can't meet demand," Huang said. The acknowledgment of what had been an open secret online, in local magazines and among people awaiting transplants came about two weeks after China announced it would tighten oversight of capital cases, requiring that death sentences be approved by the country's highest court. Legal experts estimate that will reduce executions by a third.
Though China doesn't disclose the number of annual executions, Amnesty International says at least 1,770 people were put to death in 2005, based on a review of Chinese media reports. Some activists say the annual figure could be as high as 10,000. The lower estimate represents more than 80% of at least 2,148 that Amnesty International says took place worldwide last year. The United States executed 60 prisoners.
In July, China ruled that all sales of organs were illegal. But enforcing its decrees can be a problem, especially when substantial profits are involved. In September 2004, local media reported that well-known comedian Fu Biao spent more than $36,000 for a liver from an executed prisoner in Shandong province.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I wonder how many of the humans on display as "ART" in Seattle right now are remnants of this? Pretty disgusting.
None. All of the people who have been displayed in exhibits have given signed consent forms. And I understand the lists are long of donors.
They are doing it for science. At one time even autopies were considered blasphemous. Let's not regress.
Like you said, it's china. Anything is a capital crime. Being a Christian, stealing bread, advocating freedom.
Are we to assume that the standard list of inhuman crimes doesn't occur in China? Murders, rapes, and tortures of all variety?
Pardon my frankness..... but WTF?????? So what if they salvage organs from the damned?
BFD.
So, given the statistics that end this article, it looks like China has cornered the market for organ sales, and has done that precisely by using the organs of executed prisoners. I was glad to see that article finally got around to dealing with the Falun Gong , who have been claiming for years that they have been targeted as a troublesome social group, imprisoned, then executed , and hey, since they're dead, let's get even for their lack of dedication to the Communist cause, and make a little money on their organs! For anyone in an official capacity in the Chinese Government, or the official Medical Establishment to make this kind of mea culpa admission of guilt or impropriety is highly suspect, as if there is something much bigger that is being headed off at the pass.
BTT
They're not salvaging them from the dead. They're killing Falun Gong and other political prisioners as necessary to get the organs.
It's a BFD.
Right....and you know that political prisoners are part and parcel of this system.
I'm sure that they would. Coming from the L.A. Times, I'm not so sure that they did.
Even less so with Amnesty International as a source.
“Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.”
---Barry Goldwater
I worked with a woman who was trained as a doctor in China. All of the cadavers they dissected in med school were shot in the head. They couldn't study the brain very much for obvious reasons.
On the whole I find the concept very interesting, and if someone knows that their body will be used in such a manner - fine. Its the Chinese part that I have a problem with. And as the article states, not all were "donors". And even the "unclaimed" status is suspect being that they are from China.
From one of the local Washington rags:
The bodies in many of the exhibitions are primarily Chinese, bringing accusations that laws regulating cadaver use are more lax in China, and the bodies were obtained without consent or surreptitiously.
The lack of explicit consent has concerned some medial ethicists. ......
German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that some bodies used by "Body Worlds," which is not affiliated with the Seattle exhibition, used executed Chinese prisoners. German investigators, however, found no evidence to support those allegations.
All cadavers used for "Bodies" were legally obtained, and those of Chinese people — many of whom died from disease or natural causes — who were either unknown or had no families to claim their bodies when they died, Glover said.
I have heard that China keeps the prisoners, often political prisoners, alive until the end, so the organs will be fresh, and the prisoner is shaking with fear, knowing his fate.
An entire lifetime of 'getting it', but I have not seen this quote before. Wonderful, and thanks!
Larry Niven nailed it back in the 1970s, didn't he?
"it looks like China has cornered the market for organ sales, and has done that precisely by using the organs of executed prisoners."
China has also figured out how to play the capitalist game. These "executed" prisoners are worth more dead than alive. China does have something like 1.3 billion people.
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