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Chinese inmates had hearts or lungs removed during executions, study says
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- z3ncyberpunk 5y agoYes, this was reported many times over the last few years... What rock have you been under?
- 737min 5y agoNotable that this is a professional medical association saying this based on a stufy, not a journalist or blogger.
- qiskit 5y agoJust as notable is that china passed laws to stop this practice in 2015 as the article noted. The same year taiwan stopped the practice of taking organs from prisoners. Yet the propaganda is rather one sided. I wonder. I'm against all organ "donations". If it is your time to die, it's your time to die. Also, the biggest issue in organ donation isn't china or taiwan supposedly harvesting a few dozen prisoners' organs. It's the illegal trafficking of organs of poor and desperate people around the world which makes up almost all of the organ harvesting/donations. I'm going to bet that almost all of the organ harvesting in china, taiwan and most of the world is organ "donations" by poor people. Now that's what people should truly be upset about. But I'd doubt we'd see much propaganda about that.
- tempestn 5y agoYou're against organ donations from willing donors that save lives? Are you against other forms of life-saving medicine as well?
- tasuki 5y agoThe person you're replying to mentioned "poor and desperate people", while you mention the same as "willing donors". Perhaps they're being taken advantage of: they could be in a very bad socio-economic situation through no fault of their own, have no other means to keep themselves fed, or be misled about the potential consequences?
- tempestn 5y agoThey said, "I'm against all organ "donations". If it is your time to die, it's your time to die." I agree that paying for organs creates bad incentives. But I think organ donation after (non-capital punishment) death is a Good Thing, and it's hard for me to understand someone being against it.
- tasuki 5y agoAgreed! I mistakenly thought you were replying to the other part of the comment...
- davidjytang 5y agoA huge difference between Taiwan and China is that Taiwan does it voluntarily. By the way, prisoners in Taiwan can still voluntarily donate their organs to their close relatives. Trying to mix Taiwan and China together is quite a word salad.
- VerminOctopus1 5y agoAlso notable that the article itself was authored by one person, who works here: https://victimsofcommunism.org/leader/matthew-robertson/ https://victimsofcommunism.org/leader/matthew-robertson/
- mistrial9 5y agothere is a lenghty (and horrible) documentary on this focusing on the persecution by authorities of a non-violent movement of .. whatever it is called.. across China. The documentary came out in the USA right around the time that major trade policies were changed under Biden, which seemed not-coincidental. Once the finger pointing starts in this thread, lets remind ourselves that peace is possible, starting now. edit: yes that documentary link below.. This post is getting downvoted, but I will add.. revenge and unresolved anti-justice sentiment are prime motivators for WAR. I ask people who have never seen this up close, to think very well before adding nationalistic accusations to a public forum. Personally I am a friend to the Tibetan People and this is nothing new to me, so do not mistake kindness for weakness. It is a stronger stance to firmly refuse antagonizing strong emotions, and find a path forward that includes justice and individual human rights, for all beings I might add.
- dm319 5y agoI think you're referring to the Falun Gong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong
- akprasad 5y agoAre you referring to Falun Gong [1]? I couldn't find the documentary you have in mind, but I did find this one [2] from 2014. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Harvest_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Harvest_(film)
- robonerd 5y agoThose who would make peace with tyranny do not deserve peace.
- mistrial9 5y agothis phrase exactly, is sometimes called a "dog whistle" .. the intention is to incite violence against those who "do not deserve peace".. It is important to see this for what it is, and what it leads to, IMO.
- option 5y agoNotable is that they remove organs before actual death (however it is defined by medical community) to avoid organ “spoilage”
- 0des 5y agoPragmatic
- cuteboy19 5y agoHopefully the "patient" was already brain-dead?
- belter 5y agoNope. Pioneered by the Japanese during World War II. Also no anesthesia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 Edit: I would like to point out the reason why I said no based on this resource: "Execution by organ procurement: Breaching the dead donor rule in China": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30921371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30921371 The practices of Unit 731 are more well documented that some of the Nazi crimes.
- omginternets 5y agoNo anesthesia by the Japanese, or by the current-day Chinese?
- tomrod 5y agoWhy do people do this?
- hh3k0 5y agoMoney.
- madaxe_again 5y agoFear. State-sponsored vivisection is a pretty strong deterrent against dissent.
- robbedpeter 5y agoChina is run by gangsters, essentially. They make Mexican cartels look like Mother Theresa on some levels.
- hh3k0 5y agoIt's not widely known. In fact, I'd wager if you'd tell a Chinese person about it, they'd simply refuse to believe your "Western propaganda". Money is the real motivation here, as the harvested organs fetch quite the price.
- 0des 5y agoWhen there are enough people you stop thinking of them as lives that have value. Naturally the ones in prison are the least desirable.
- fullshark 5y agoThe needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few
- mysterydip 5y agoAre you volunteering?
- CyanBird 5y ago
- tomohawk 5y agoThe China Tribunal came out with a report of how the government of China harvests organs from political prisoners. It is a very widespread practice. https://chinatribunal.com/ https://chinatribunal.com/ The document: https://chinatribunal.com/final-judgment/# https://chinatribunal.com/final-judgment/#
- CyanBird 5y agoOh yeah, the China Tribunal, I dont know if many people ever read the document that was published[1], but it has got several key points, which at the time I didnt quite understand why they were worded the way they were, such as repeating the "holiness" of the people's bodies, or phrases such as "the physical integrity of their beings", which, are just awkward phrases At the end, when digging a little bit few years ago, it turned out that this "China Tribunal" was itself not a "real group", but a spin off of ETAC[2], which is a small group that is against "End Transplant Abuse in China", itself stacked with Falun Gong practitioners, so ETAC reached out to doctors, lawyers, whom would go and oppose organ harvesting in China and added them as members of the "Tribunal"[A1], then financed/rented the halls which the "China Tribunal" would use to do their decree to oppose the Chinese organ harvesting of Chinese death row inmates, but, most of their pieces are not per-se dedicated to oppose the Chinese organ harvest methods in general, but focused on shedding light of Falun Gong's victims [3] Then to get the word out of their Tribunal, they invited Reuters Foundation, not Reuters, the NGO politically active foundation of the same name, and then Reuters proper, published a Reuters Foundation article on their website [4] Now days, we have new Uyghur groups, which will be doing similar schemes such as declaring these tribunals, these Uyghur groups themselves, being funded by the National Endowment For Democracy [5][6] [1] https://chinatribunal.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ChinaTribunal_JUDGMENT_1stMarch_2020.pdf https://chinatribunal.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ChinaTr... [2] https://chinatribunal.com/about-etac/ https://chinatribunal.com/about-etac/ [3] https://endtransplantabuse.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/BloodyHarvest.WEB_.pdf https://endtransplantabuse.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Bl... [4] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-china-rights-idUSKCN1TI236 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-china-rights-idUS... [5] https://endtransplantabuse.org/?s=Tribunal https://endtransplantabuse.org/?s=Tribunal [6] https://www.ned.org/wp-content/themes/ned/search/grant-search.php?organizationName=World+Uyghur+Congress®ion=&projectCountry=&amount=&fromDate=&toDate=&projectFocus%5B%5D=&search=&maxCount=25&orderBy=Year&start=1&sbmt=1 https://www.ned.org/wp-content/themes/ned/search/grant-searc... [A1] Note that several of the people involved with this China Tribunal, were themselves involved on the older "Iran Tribunal" dedicated to highlight the crimes of the People's Republic of Iran, that tribunal itself also had several of their members financially benefiting from US National Endowment for Democracy grants and payments, and these same people are highly regarded members of this new "China Tribunal" [7] [7] https://hopoi.org/?p=2250 https://hopoi.org/?p=2250 Mind you, that this post is not to deny the situation of China harvesting the organs of death row inmates, but rather to shed light on just how murky the funding of all these groups is, and how incestuous they are on the people orchestrating them, note that EndTransplantAbuseInChina (ETAC) doesnt have a "who funds us" page
- sonicggg 5y agoSo China infringes on human rights, in other news "water is wet". Not really newsworthy. I would be shocked if it was Iceland or Norway doing that. As much as we hate hearing about it, only the Chinese people have the power to make changes to this regime. Having met many Chinese students abroad, I'd say they are OK with this happening. Either they are apathic, or supportive of their totalitarian regime.
- afry1 5y agoI am astounded by the lack of empathy in what you've written.
- triyambakam 5y agoIt seems more like OP is just being realistic.
- happytoexplain 5y agoOne can be realistic and unnecessarily unempathetic at the same time.
- fennecfoxen 5y agoWhat is he supposed to write instead? This is not news. There's new studies confirming it, but we've known for decades China is ruled by a totalitarian regime that treats human life as disposable, and we've heard rumors of this for decades, and of much, much worse. No one with power has done anything about it. No one with power wants to do anything about it. Instead we have world leaders praise China for its boldness in the coronavirus lockdowns, politicians and pundits who fantasize — let me use Thomas Friedman's words here — "What if we could just be China for a day? I mean, just, just, just one day. You know, I mean, where we could actually, you know, authorize the right solutions ..." China has power. They envy it. They want it. They want us to be less free and more like that. It's more common than not. Your political party is not immune. If you're lucky, they're struggling to engage with the idea of China as a Major Geopolitical Risk (and it makes them somewhat uncomfortable to admit even that) or they're trying to be tough on China as a general play for Economic Protectionism, an excuse to serve the self-interest of a narrow slice of their constituency. (America First!!! Let's pay $900k/yr/job to save $100k/yr jobs in the steel industry!!! This is the only road to prosperity!!!) You chide GP poster for his cynicism, essentially. Why shouldn't we all be cynical? I'm sorry, you're late to the show and probably missed out on the shock factor by a good decade or so, possibly longer.
- belter 5y ago"Execution by organ procurement: Breaching the dead donor rule in China": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30921371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30921371 "Human Harvest (Film)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28313873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28313873
- moistly 5y agoThe biggest mistake western democracies have made is to trade with dictatorships. Enriching them has not encouraged them to become progressive, it has only made them more powerful. We have sown the seeds of our own destruction through our complicity.
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- alephnan 5y agoWould the west be as rich and Democratic without?
- belter 5y agoI am afraid the debt is now come due for payment.
- alephnan 5y agoExactly. My point here is that a lot of the Anti-China posters want to disregard and shed American’s responsibility. It’s just China that’s evil. Suddenly now that they’re rich and is/was on trajectory to surpass the United States. Where was the unified stance against China for the half century prior? The West and its consumers used China, but are now mad that the regime has always had its own agenda. It’s really simple. There’s been decades of opportunity to hold Nike accountable, but people continued to support sweatshop labor. Sweatshop labor is not directly related here, but it supports a system that does not value human lives. Offshoring labor, out of sight out of mind, to countries like China is a negative externality. Suddenly now China is the only one to blame when the externality is no longer external ( microplastics ). It would not be hypocritical if countries “internalized their negative externalities”, or maybe just not create negative externalities or internalities in the first place. e.g. demote consumption, but that would not be very American. Just look at the public / self storage industry. Americans have two door garages and that’s still not enough. That part is really not China’s fault, even though they are the enabler.
- 1024core 5y agoI know of one person (my friend's mom) who literally got this procedure done: she needed a new kidney, and they waited till a death row convict came along who was a match. When she was matched, she got a phone call to come over to that particular city quickly, and she went there, and came back a few days later with a brand new pair of kidneys. It was almost like when you give your car in for repair, and when it's ready they call you. Her justification: this guy was going to die anyways, why not save someone's life in the process? Rumor is also that SF Chinatown politician Rose Pak[1] got such a procedure done as a favor from the CCP government. She was extremely powerful, and CCP wanted to curry favor with her. When she got back from her "treatment", the entire who's who of SF ruling class showed up at the airport to receive her [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Pak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Pak [2] https://www.sfexaminer.com/photo-galleries/chinatown-community-leader-rose-pak-arrives-in-san-francisco/nggallery/image/9-14/ https://www.sfexaminer.com/photo-galleries/chinatown-communi...
- hbarka 5y agoI don’t know anything about Rose Pak but your rumor post feels so vile like political propaganda. Your links have no substantiation whatsoever and you’re comfortable with that?
- eganist 5y agoAlso very much out of left field. If this is as common as claimed, only one example would've been needed (and more examples could've been sourced with less controversial contexts). The second example: 1. isn't verified ("rumor"), and 2. mentions many points entirely incidental to the operation itself and doesn't materially contribute to the topic of organ harvesting from inmates.
- late2part 5y agoPot, Kettle, Black.
- clarkmoody 5y agoThat's the trick: do something so horrendous that the natural response of normal people is to think, "There's no way it's actually that bad." So then nobody asks questions.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tylergetsay 5y agoWhats the likelyhood countries are testing non-approved drugs on prisoners? This is what scares me the most
- ceejayoz 5y agoThat definitely happens. https://www.npr.org/2022/01/18/1073846967/arkansas-inmates-ivermectin-lawsuit-covid-19 https://www.npr.org/2022/01/18/1073846967/arkansas-inmates-i... > Four inmates at an Arkansas jail have filed a federal lawsuit after they say medical staff gave them the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin to treat COVID-19 without telling them what it was. The inmates said they were told the medicines they were taking were "vitamins," "antibiotics" or "steroids."
- ymgch 5y agoThese numbers are only the tip of the iceberg.
- lil_dispaches 5y agoLungs? Do they have a buyer in Wuhan?
- elil17 5y agoI think execution is absolutely wrong and never morally justifiable. However I don’t see why execution + organ harvesting is worse than execution alone.
- throwanem 5y agoThere's a perverse incentive, especially if medical tourism also exists.
- duxup 5y agoIt certainly could provide some perverse motivations. Any effort to stop executions now includes the fact that potential donors recipients will die.
- kaba0 5y agoIt supposes that not enough organs are in circulation. Even with the opt-out donation model of some European countries they usually have surprisingly short waiting lists for most organs, as unfortunately plenty of accidental deaths occur every day.
- zuppy 5y agobecause it can be an incentive to kill people for money, due to corruption.
- ComradePhil 5y agoWhere's the outrage and incentive debates when fully formed human babies are "aborted" and sent to be burned for biofuel? All done by for-profit companies all the way through. I definitely didn't see it here in HackerNews.
- kaba0 5y agoWhat the hell are you talking about? Do you even know what a 20 weeks fetus look like? And wtf, why would anyone burn some 30g thingy for biofuel? Especially that plenty of abortions are simply a heavier than usual blood flow, not a surgical operation of getting a baby out of someone, smh.
- imwillofficial 5y ago
- tptacek 5y agoChina's death row is shrouded in secrecy. It keeps its figures on executions secret, but Amnesty International estimates that it killed thousands of prisoners from 2016 to 2020. The US government, conversely, killed 13 prisoners during that time period following a 17-year hiatus that former President Donald Trump ended. Inaccurate, of course; the US executed something more like 100 prisoners during that time period, since most executions are not carried out by the federal government.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- guilhas 5y agoEveryone in UK is an organ donor by default You might criticise that there is still a death penalty You might criticise the justice system is not good enough But taking the organs from prisoners that were sentenced to be executed that day doesn't sound that unreasonable, if that guarantees better organs to save someone else
- tartoran 5y agoBut don’t you think for a second that may incentivise raising the number of executions to meet the high demand of organs? And having that justice in China is something that is not at all transparent it may as well turn any dissident into supply for organ banks. I find this extremely cynical and very hard to accept no matter how you look at it.
- ComradePhil 5y ago> Everyone in UK is an organ donor by default Are you able to opt out?
- guilhas 5y agoYes. It would be quite unacceptable otherwise
- andy_ppp 5y agoIsn’t this inline with their values, collective above individual rights? Is it genuinely bad or is using the organs of someone you were about to execute and give someone else life a good thing?
- paulcole 5y agoIt is genuinely bad. In the US we don’t even need the free-organ incentive to sentence innocent people to death.
- andy_ppp 5y agoThey would probably say, on average, that it works out for the best overall for society? I disagree with them but they have a very different way of looking at things from me. I prefer to think about where others are coming from rather than just condemn them.
- paulcole 5y agoAny government putting any people to death is genuinely bad in my opinion.
- Borrible 5y agoI suspect that Chinese law enforcement agencies are offering death row inmates conducive "incentives" and "arguments" to strengthen their good will to cooperate. After all, it is for a good cause and in a certain moral sense to make amends for their sins against the communist body of the people. A bit like an eye for an eye, but more visceral. Scientific socialism at its best. https://web.archive.org/web/20170207112528/https://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1994/china1/china_948.htm#_1_20 https://web.archive.org/web/20170207112528/https://www.hrw.o... https://web.archive.org/web/20170207112528/https://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1994/china1/china_948.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20170207112528/https://www.hrw.o...
- ricardobayes 5y ago
- radu_floricica 5y agoThat's actually a very good point, which I was too caught up in the article to realize. Thanks. Flag it is.
- pyuser583 5y agoA lot of people are talking about “perverse incentives.” I guess they mean “people being sentenced to death simply so their organs can be harvested.” It would be nice to see some evidence that actually happened. I’m not an admirer of the CCP, but it doesn’t seem trial judges are under any pressure to give death sentences simply to supply organs. China has a very large prison population. Including many “lifers.” Many of the prisoners have perfectly fine organs. Yet there doesn’t seem to be pressure to move any of these prisoners to death row to get at their organs. One good argument against it is that it stigmatizes organ donation. In fact, it really should be called “organ confiscation” or just plain “execution.” It doesn’t set a standard of organ donation being a good thing.
- franga2000 5y ago> It doesn’t set a standard of organ donation being a good thing. The donation part, outside of specific cases like kidneys where they can be donated by a living person, is never a "good thing" if you're looking at where it came from - usually someone dying in a car accident or worse. And besides, harvesting organs from death row inmates isn't a donation, so it wouldn't really dilute that. fwiw, I'm not defending taking organs from death row inmates, just replying to this specific concern. Hell, I'd much rather we took organs from any dead body we can - the idea of bodily integrity for a corpse being valued so much we'd rather let people die than violate it is IMO one of our biggest failures as a society.
- VerminOctopus1 5y agoThere’s an unsettling lack of skepticism from the commenters here. If you do the most surface level digging on this, you will find that the author of the study is a shill for anti-China propaganda, usually with a guise of anti-communism. Writing like this is all produced through Washington thinktanks and then pushed to media outlets en masse. Given the source of money and political bent of this material, it’s hard for me to earnestly believe it.
- adhesive_wombat 5y agoAlso remember that billions of dollars have been explicitly assigned by US legislation in the last couple of years for what is, basically, propaganda: the 2021 Strategic Competition Act gives $300 million per year for 4 years, the COMPETES act gives another $500 million. I don't know if you can say where it goes exactly, but just bear in mind that there is at a billion dollars' worth of anti-China stuff sloshing about somewhere in "the media" that was funded directly, and purposefully, from Congress, and who knows how much from less direct sources.
- schleyreuth 5y agoStudy[1] has two authors, second of which is well-qualified[2] to discuss procedures and ethics regarding organ donation. Funding information is listed right after the publication date. It's not hidden information that requires any digging. If this is sloppy anti-China propaganda as asserted, it should be easy to dismiss. Does it make sense that everyone involved in the review process of the American Journal of Transplantation all share the same political beliefs? [1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ajt.16969 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ajt.16969 [2] https://www.eacts.org/faculty/jacob-lavee/ https://www.eacts.org/faculty/jacob-lavee/
- mytailorisrich 5y agoDeath penalty is China is, I believe, a bullet to the back of the head. Does this study suggest that they removed organs before that?
- dirtyid 5y agoMore Victim's of Communism funded drama, "during executions" is a funny way of saying "after execution" just because they didn't verify brain death. PRC didn't establish formal transplant system until recently - using organs from executed was most viable interim solution. And largely insufficient in terms of supply/demand. It was still hard AF to get execution organ until ban, much easier to pay some rural villagers for spare kidney or buy from illegal harvesters murdering innocents in ASEAN.