Report alleges Chinese Govt harvesting body organs of political prisoners
Australia has one of the lowest rates of organ donation in the developed world. The people who had kidney transplants in New South Wales last year, for example, had waited an average of eight years for a suitable organ.
That’s the kind of pressure that’s created the new phenomenon of “transplant tourism”, with patients going to countries like India and China for their operations.
Last year an Australian report highlighted the rate of HIV/AIDS or Hepatitis in patients who’d had such operations overseas.
Now a report from Canada says most of the organs in China are not donated at all. They’re taken from political prisoners who die after the organs are literally harvested from them.
Transplant doctors in Australia are alarmed and are calling for more Government controls on patients travelling to China.
Michael Edwards has this report.
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id…
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2006/s1683142.htm
http://www.youtube.com/v/0wtSV_BEf14
Why has this received so little coverage? Is it because we don’t care? Is it because our own fear of dying trumps any kind of moral obligations? The original plan was that China was to be absorbed into global conventions with it’s economic rise. Now it looks like it’s rather the contrary: their economic strength is such that they risk no such thing, and we are the ones who cannot afford to speak out for fear of retribution.
We allow our citizens to murder political prisoners for only £50,000 a shot. It seems like though as much as we value our freedom, we allow ourselves to be used as tools to diminish those of others, under the pretext of economic strengthening. We admonish Yahoo for the slightest bit of privacy invasion in the US, but if they give up the IP address of a Chinese Blogger to the government – it’s good business. It’s all about business. We live in a world so economically competitive that we would rather shut up and allow atrocities to take place, rather risk hurting the economy. That’s part of the reason for which we are supporting the oppressive regime known as Saudi Arabia, isn’t it? We’d rather have their oil, and some of their territory for military purposes, rather than confront them about the beheadings of political prisoners?
So what does that make freedom. A worthless buzzword, a piece of economic garbage. If we allow our morals to be so pliable for the sake of economic power, then it is meaningless, and in danger of extinction altogether.
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
~Abraham Lincoln