Japan's rich buy organs from executed Chinese prisoners

[DeclinetoState]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article352535.ece


By Clifford Coonan in Beijing and David McNeill in Tokyo

Published: 21 March 2006

Hundreds of well-off Japanese and other nationals are turning to China's burgeoning human organ transplant industry, paying tens of thousands of pounds for livers and kidneys, which in some cases have been harvested from executed prisoners and sold to hospitals.

When Kenichiro Hokamura's kidneys failed, he faced a choice: wait for a transplant or go online to check out rumours of organs for sale. As a native of Japan, where just 40 human organs for transplant have been donated since 1997, the businessman, 62, says it was no contest. "There are 100 people waiting in this prefecture alone. I would have died before getting a donor." Still, he was astonished by just how easy it was.

Ten days after contacting a Japanese broker in China two months ago, he was lying on an operating table in a Shanghai hospital receiving a new kidney. "It was so fast, I was scared," he says. The "e-donor" was an executed man; the price: 6.8m yen (about £33,000).

Beijing does not reveal how many people it executes, but analysts estimate as many as 8,000 people are killed each year.


I don't know what to say about this.

[DesertFox]

Kim Jong-Il could do this if his prisoners -- his entire population -- weren't so scrawny from starvation. Bad business practice, starvation. It shrivels the kidneys, scars the heart and collapses the retinas.

[BEST45CAL]

Well, if the people are not being whacked just for their organs, they're healthy and they have been found guilty beyond any doubt, then I guess it's okay. I mean, what are the dead people gonna do with 'em? I'm an organ donor and I think everyone should be. If you're dead, you don't need your kidneys or anything else anymore. Some people are silly about not wanting to be an organ donor.

A police officer friend of mine was killed in the line of duty a few years back. The back of his head was blown out. He was on life support, but was eventually removed from it. He was also an organ donor and his liver kept someone else alive.

[jayson]

Best, I think the issue here is that the chinese are perhaps killing off political prisoners and other inmates of minor crimes to make huge profits.

In America, it's voluntary. In China, it's not.

In China, we have no idea if they are harvesting thousands of prisoner's parts for cash. $50,000 for a kidney aint bad. When you are talking about even 1,000 prisoners a year (most likely much much more, though), thats still an extra $50,000,000 a year in profits. Think if they are harvesting 10,000? More? We don't know.

Once they taste the milk of pure unadulterated profits, what stops them from supplying us with simple citizen's parts who they've rounded up for no crime at all?

[Un Con Troll Able]

Lends a whole new meaning to the expression "Chinese Take-Out."

[BEST45CAL]

You're bad. lol

[BEST45CAL]

Best, I think the issue here is that the chinese are perhaps killing off political prisoners and other inmates of minor crimes to make huge profits.

In America, it's voluntary. In China, it's not.

In China, we have no idea if they are harvesting thousands of prisoner's parts for cash. $50,000 for a kidney aint bad. When you are talking about even 1,000 prisoners a year (most likely much much more, though), thats still an extra $50,000,000 a year in profits. Think if they are harvesting 10,000? More? We don't know.

Once they taste the milk of pure unadulterated profits, what stops them from supplying us with simple citizen's parts who they've rounded up for no crime at all?

I have no idea what's going on over there, either. I don't know if they're harvesting organs exclusively for profit or not. I don't know what "human rights" violations these "donors" may have had to endure.

All I can do is address what happens to the people after they get whacked.

[Lazarus]

if it weren't China I'd be more comfy with the practice, but as it was pointed out above, the Chinese government is just a s likely to be whacking politcal dissidents and profiting from the sale of donor organs... If that is what is happening, its something right out of a science fiction story... Butchery of humans for profit...

Certainly some of these executions are criminals who deserve death, but with China's Communist government, certainly not all of them are...

On the other hand I synpathize with the Japanese man who literally was facing death for lack of doner organs...

I too am an organ donor because i have faced a life-threatening desease and I know what its like to live even with a removed organ... So when I die, if my parts can improve someone else's life, they are welcome to them - As long as no one is profiting from them...

But I'll warn anyone who gets my bits - Im riding em pretty hard right now... I cant guarantee their condition when Im done with em...:D