Posted on 08/26/2009 12:40:14 PM PDT by BGHater
China has inaugurated a voluntary organ donor program, hoping to overhaul a system that now harvests the vast majority of its organs from black-market sellers and executed prisoners and leaves millions of ailing people without hope of getting a transplant.
The new program, run by the national Red Cross Society with help from China’s Health Ministry, was reported by the state-run English-language newspaper China Daily on Wednesday. The newspaper quoted the vice minister of health, Huang Jiefu, as saying the goal was to create an organ donation system that “will benefit patients regardless of social status and wealth.”
At least one million people in China need organ transplants each year, but only about 10,000 receive them, according to government statistics. Dr. Huang said that most of those organs — as high as 65 percent, by some estimates — are taken from death row inmates after their executions.
China does not publicly report execution figures, but Amnesty International estimates that 1,718 prisoners were put to death in 2008, the highest number of any nation. The government said last month that it plans to cut the number of executions to “an extremely small number” by changing criminal laws and issuing more suspended death sentences.
The practice of harvesting organs from executed Chinese convicts has been widely reported in the past, although it was only confirmed in 2005, by Dr. Huang, at a medical conference in Manila. The government has routinely denied other allegations that prisoners’ organs regularly found their way to the black market, often for sale to wealthy foreigners, and that executions were sometimes scheduled to coincide with the need for a specific organ.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
in other news, pushers are offering free hits of heroin...
We’re here for your liver.
WHAT?
Your liver, we’re here for it. We got someone what needs it.
But...
Look, you DID sign this organ donor card right?
Yes, but...
Right! So, we’re here for your liver...
Wonder why Chinese are so shy of personal organ bequests? Are they afraid of getting offed by some corrupt official?
Is it a Buddhist thang?
Some states are pushing to make organ donation by default, and you would need to opt out of the program.
Voluntary? So I guess all those executed for being an enemy of the people will have to *request* execution in the future.
Executions will continue until morale improves, comrade.
Chinese require the body of the dead to be buried or cremated whole.
Well, it’s progress, I guess.
Yeah, Singapore has a presumed consent for organs. Joy. They will literally pull the plug on ya.
Chinese law? Religious practice? Cultural norm?
Buddhist in nature and part of burial traditions.
Supposed to screw up the ascension to Nirvana or some such thing?
Interestingly enough, I am hearing that up to 25% of Chinese are quietly Christians.
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