Here in the US, there are long delays for organ transplants: for kidneys, its not unusual to wait 5 years as dialysis is an alternative. If you need a heart or liver transplant it is based on your overall condition as well as the severity of need - in other words, how quickly the organ is failing. However, in China the wait for a transplant might only be months, weeks or even days. Why????
This story comes out of China recently: "Official organ donations may come from people who voluntarily choose to donate their organs after death, or people who sell organs such as kidneys. But in June, the China Tribunal, an independent organization created to investigate the alleged crimes, found that some prisoners have their organs forcefully harvested—sometimes while they’re still alive. Human rights lawyers estimate 65,000 Falun Gong practitioners have been killed for their organs since 2001, and members of other religious and ethnic minorities, including Uyghurs, Tibetans, and some Christian sects, have suffered the same fate."
According to a recent NBC news story, "Some of the more than 1.5 million detainees in Chinese prison camps are being killed for their organs to serve a booming transplant trade that is worth some $1 billion a year, concluded the China Tribunal, an independent body tasked with investigating organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in the authoritarian state."
The International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China made the above observation. There have been accusations over the years of unethical transplant practices in China. There are multiple academic and news reports of unwilling living donors mostly prisoners who were selected to be organ donors. See references for links. However, China continues to state that they stopped the practice of utilizing prisoners as unwilling organ donors in 2015.
So, what about the recipients of these organs? From the NY Post, "Experts estimate that between 60,000 and 100,000 organs are transplanted annually in China. Multiply that number times the cost of a liver transplant ($170,000) or a kidney transplant ($130,000), and the result is an eye-popping $10 billion to 20 billion." The article goes on to state that most "transplant tourists" don't ask or care to know where their organs come from, only that they get their transplant. Are some of these recipients from the US? Well, there are no published statistics of WHO receives these forced donations. China has faced scrutiny in the past few years for this practice. However, the transplant assembly line seems to continue.
Recently the UN has been urged to investigate this practice. "A senior lawyer called on Tuesday for the top United Nations human rights body to investigate evidence that China is murdering members of the Falun Gong spiritual group and harvesting their organs for transplant.
Hamid Sabi called for urgent action as he presented the findings of the China Tribunal, an independent panel set up to examine the issue, which concluded in June that China’s organ harvesting amounted to crimes against humanity."
In the US, we do utilize living donors for kidneys and partial liver transplants. However, transplantation from non-volunteer or incarcerated prisoners would be abhorrent to all. Ethically, in the US, we do not utilize prisoners for organ donations as they are considered an at-risk population in that they have limited ability to refuse. Intentionally executing people for their donors seems like something out of a horror movie for most of us.
What are your thoughts? What about the medical personnel who take part in these operations?
Specializes in Psych, Addictions, SOL (Student of Life).
I saw a documentary once where Chinese surgeons in masks went into the stadiums where Chinese dissidents were being executed and harvested organs while the body were still warm. At one point China was executing about 2400 people a month.
The documentary also featured an American businessman who flew to China for a kidney transplant instead of waiting for a Kidney in the US.
This is so scary! It should make us appreciate conditions we have here in the United States. There are similar horror stories about the ex Soviet Union. They would let a trauma person die and falsify medical record because some rich person needed an organ and found a match.
I saw a documentary once where Chinese surgeons in masks went into the stadiums where Chinese dissidents were being executed and harvested organs while the body were still warm. At one point China was executing about 2400 people a month.
The documentary also featured an American businessman who flew to China for a kidney transplant instead of waiting for a Kidney in the US.
I have had several pts who were citizens from another country go back to their home and pay for a transplant. Until I read this, I never thought that they could be unwilling donors.
16 hours ago, no.intervention.required said:
This is so scary! It should make us appreciate conditions we have here in the United States. There are similar horror stories about the ex Soviet Union. They would let a trauma person die and falsify medical record because some rich person needed an organ and found a match.
Agree - this is an extremely scary and sickening situation
The concept of "free speech" is largely a western, in particular, a construct of the United States. Most countries have some form of limited rights to speech and expression.
I personally do not subscribe to the concept of universal cultural tolerance but many do. For example, I think there are some cultures (not saying the people but specifically the culture) should be eradicated. I do however take great efforts to try to understand why a culture does what it does.
The Chinese as a culture simply do not value certain "human rights" the same as most Americans. Many Chinese think forced live organ harvesting from criminals and social rebels as just and right.
My point was most places seem prisoners as less than human. Protesting something is less “bad” by most standards. To treat that heavy handed you know prisoners are getting a bad deal.
also this is the same country that thinks a “social credit” is a good thing. Don’t clean up after your dog? The world will shame you and keep you from some service or good for a while. It’s a bad idea
This is indeed an abhorrent practice. I can't imagine a government that kills their citizens just to obtain their organs. I have no knowledge on how the Chinese medical system works, who pays for this? I know in the US the donor is not responsible for any costs related to organ harvesting. I can only assume that the Chinese government foots the bill for the donor whether it is a willing donation or not but I honestly have not a clue. The recipient end of donation is a very expensive process that also requires extensive aftercare. Does their medical model also foot the bill for this or it is a case of he or she that can afford the organ gets it?
I think it's quite hypocritical to have sanctimonious moral dispositions when we have equally repugnant inhumane issues happening in the U.S currently. Should the highest form of sanctions be instituted because of the children caged at the borders? for senseless killings of unarmed black men? systematic ethnical oppression? Be as it may, the situation in China is abhorrent and deserving of the utmost rebuke; however, we would be remiss to point the splinter in their eye and ignore the log in ours. History shows that our moral compass is not better than anyone else. It is actually disdainful.
I think it's quite hypocritical to have sanctimonious moral dispositions when we have equally repugnant inhumane issues happening in the U.S currently. Should the highest form of sanctions be instituted because of the children caged at the borders? for senseless killings of unarmed black men? systematic ethnical oppression? Be as it may, the situation in China is abhorrent and deserving of the utmost rebuke; however, we would be remiss to point the splinter in their eye and ignore the log in ours. History shows that our moral compass is not better than anyone else. It is actually disdainful.
Agree - I certainly don't believe the US is without flaws. Thanks.
I'm going to preface this with a couple points, Yes, it's hair raisingly awful that the Chinese Government is killing political prisoners to harvest their organs.
We live an a glass house, we are no model of virtue. The very computers we communicate with on this board are largely Chinese made. Think about that...
Here in the United States we value individualism, we value free speech and freedom of assembly. Think about the saying on New Hampshire's licence Plates "Live Free or Die." We also value freedom of religion. These sensibilities and expectations are alien to most Chinese. It's more about your group, your family, your neighborhood. The Government wants peaceful obedient workers who don't think too deeply about Philosophy, religion or the meaning of life. Indeed they regard Christianity with great suspicion and the history of the western powers and their interaction with China would give the government good reason. One element of classical communism that has held on is a general disdain for any religion.
Why? Because religion, be it culturally appropriate like Buddhism or Taoism, imported like Christianity or Islam, or new, like Falun Gong, gives people the tools to think for themselves and to protest unethical practices. It gives them the strength and the unity to mount these protests in an orderly and effective manner.
So they arrest these folks, making them prisoners of conscience. but now what? If they kick them out of China they go abroad and write and talk about what's happening in China. If they publicly execute them they become martyrs and heroes of the resistance. If they die quietly in prison then maybe people will forget.
Also every Chinese citizen knows that protesting this trade in transplant organs could result in them becoming the next donor!
Here, outside of China, we have to do what we can to dry up the customer base for this. We have to talk to people, we have to let the world know that if you go to China for a kidney transplant the donor might not have been willing or able to consent to giving you a new lease on life. To know that the Chinese will tell you otherwise, to know that, while one sector of the government is doing this, the outward facing sector of the government wants to pretend it's not happening and their very jobs will depend on this maintenance of a lie.
The other thing is to think twice about buying Cheap Chinese Crap, triple C...if you can, choose something else!
I think it's quite hypocritical to have sanctimonious moral dispositions when we have equally repugnant inhumane issues happening in the U.S currently. Should the highest form of sanctions be instituted because of the children caged at the borders? for senseless killings of unarmed black men? systematic ethnical oppression? Be as it may, the situation in China is abhorrent and deserving of the utmost rebuke; however, we would be remiss to point the splinter in their eye and ignore the log in ours. History shows that our moral compass is not better than anyone else. It is actually disdainful.
LOL. Sometimes tells me you do not travel much.
The United States and Western Europe are not perfect but are very, very far from China.
If only perfect men were allowed to cast down evil then evil would be allowed to triumph. Gandhi was a suspected pedophile and known racist, does that mean all of his work is garbage? Dr. King was a adulterer, is that mean his teachings are useless?
No one is perfect but perfection lays with those who can self evaluate and work to better themselves and those around them.
The United States and Western Europe are not perfect but are very, very far from China.
If only perfect men were allowed to cast down evil then evil would be allowed to triumph. Gandhi was a suspected pedophile and known racist, does that mean all of his work is garbage? Dr. King was a adulterer, is that mean his teachings are useless?
No one is perfect but perfection lays with those who can self evaluate and work to better themselves and those around them.
I did not equate the U.S to China. That is your myopic conclusion, similar to the assumption that I have not traveled. I have been to five continents and lived in three. Read what I wrote again. If you come to the same conclusion, then you have to do an assessment of your comprehension capacity. Not all of Gandhi's works were garbage. That does not absolve his racism, however. The same barometer can be applied to Dr. King and any other human. Nonetheless, my response was aimed at the responses that were littered with sanctimonious platitudes.
"Why? Because religion, be it culturally appropriate like Buddhism or Taoism, imported like Christianity or Islam, or new, like Falun Gong, gives people the tools to think for themselves and to protest unethical practices. It gives them the strength and the unity to mount these protests in an orderly and effective man."
Interesting. If anything, religion makes people conform to dogma. Belief itself is an acceptance of unthinking doctrines without questioning. How does that promote the thought process? Moreover, faith is arguably the suspension of reason. Religion might promote collective unity and bargaining power, but it certainly makes people mentally inflexible to ideas that are contrary to their own biases/beliefs. Perhaps that is why religion has been used as a wedge of division since time immemorial.
When you look at how religion helps or hurts a society it depends on the religion and how it's applied.
If it's used to subject people to unjust rule and to excuse abuse, yes.
It can also be used by people to elevate people...to question the status quo and resist abuse. It gave many Black Americans the strength to persevere in the civil rights movement. It gave many indians the strength to resist in pushing the British out of India. The leaders of China know this.
Just because evil people use religion as a locus of control doesn't make religion always evil.
Just because revolutionaries use religions to stir the populace does not make religion always good either.
hppygr8ful, ASN, RN, EMT-I
4 Articles; 5,212 Posts
I saw a documentary once where Chinese surgeons in masks went into the stadiums where Chinese dissidents were being executed and harvested organs while the body were still warm. At one point China was executing about 2400 people a month.
The documentary also featured an American businessman who flew to China for a kidney transplant instead of waiting for a Kidney in the US.