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Reaping the ORGAN harvest

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March 27, 2024, 12:55:24 pm Mark says: Shocked Shocked Shocked Shocked  When Hamas spokesman Abu Ubaida began a speech marking the 100th day of the war in Gaza, one confounding yet eye-opening proclamation escaped the headlines. Listing the motives for the Palestinian militant group's Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, he accused Jews of "bringing red cows" to the Holy Land.
December 31, 2022, 10:08:58 am NilsFor1611 says: blessings
August 08, 2018, 02:38:10 am suzytr says: Hello, any good churches in the Sacto, CA area, also looking in Reno NV, thanks in advance and God Bless you Smiley
January 29, 2018, 01:21:57 am Christian40 says: It will be interesting to see what happens this year Israel being 70 years as a modern nation may 14 2018
October 17, 2017, 01:25:20 am Christian40 says: It is good to type Mark is here again!  Smiley
October 16, 2017, 03:28:18 am Christian40 says: anyone else thinking that time is accelerating now? it seems im doing days in shorter time now is time being affected in some way?
September 24, 2017, 10:45:16 pm Psalm 51:17 says: The specific rule pertaining to the national anthem is found on pages A62-63 of the league rulebook. It states: “The National Anthem must be played prior to every NFL game, and all players must be on the sideline for the National Anthem. “During the National Anthem, players on the field and bench area should stand at attention, face the flag, hold helmets in their left hand, and refrain from talking. The home team should ensure that the American flag is in good condition. It should be pointed out to players and coaches that we continue to be judged by the public in this area of respect for the flag and our country. Failure to be on the field by the start of the National Anthem may result in discipline, such as fines, suspensions, and/or the forfeiture of draft choice(s) for violations of the above, including first offenses.”
September 20, 2017, 04:32:32 am Christian40 says: "The most popular Hepatitis B vaccine is nothing short of a witch’s brew including aluminum, formaldehyde, yeast, amino acids, and soy. Aluminum is a known neurotoxin that destroys cellular metabolism and function. Hundreds of studies link to the ravaging effects of aluminum. The other proteins and formaldehyde serve to activate the immune system and open up the blood-brain barrier. This is NOT a good thing."
http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-08-11-new-fda-approved-hepatitis-b-vaccine-found-to-increase-heart-attack-risk-by-700.html
September 19, 2017, 03:59:21 am Christian40 says: bbc international did a video about there street preaching they are good witnesses
September 14, 2017, 08:06:04 am Psalm 51:17 says: bro Mark Hunter on YT has some good, edifying stuff too.
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Author Topic: Reaping the ORGAN harvest  (Read 7359 times)
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« on: August 08, 2012, 07:01:54 am »

British NHS May Give Hospitals Money to Procure Organ Donations

Our modern society has commodified the human body so much that I feel sometimes that I am living in a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro.  It seems that none of us are safe if someone else thinks that they could use our parts better than we can.

Abandoned IVF embryos are seen not as the full human organisms that they are but repositories of harvestable biological material that they must forfeit to “heal the sick.”

If you are in a persistent vegetative state, then some think you should forfeit your organs to save others. http://www.notdeadyet.org/2012/02/maryland-using-pvs-diagnosis-to-justify.html

Now the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), Britain’s government run health care system, is considering giving financial incentives to hospital units for providing organs for donation and an opt-out system where it is presumed UK citizens want their organs harvested even if they have not said they want to be a donor.

From the Guardian:http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jul/27/nhs-organ-donor-optout-transplants

The NHS is considering its biggest shakeup of the ethical, legal and professional rules governing transplants, floating ideas to prolong the lives of people who have no chance of surviving in order to harvest their organs, and to make people opt out rather than in to the donor register.

The options are included in a survey of medical, scientific and public opinion to be launched this week to test the boundaries of what might be acceptable, as a precursor to significant reforms.

The survey, on the NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) website from Saturday with a deadline of 21 September, will also suggest:

• Giving priority for transplants to the 19.1 million registered donors in the UK.

• Deploying new technologies to preserve organs beyond the current method of packing them on ice.

• New financial rewards for intensive care units for every organ they provide. Hospitals currently receive about £2,000 per organ to cover their costs, which the NHSBT compares with the €7,000 (£5,500) paid in Croatia.

• Presuming consent unless people have actively opted out.

I am sorry but the audacity to think of adopting an opt-out system is outrageous to me. I understand that people are sick and need organs.  I know that some of them are very young.  But just because they are sick does not mean that a health system can assume I want to have my organs harvested while my heart is still beating. That is I decision I must actively make by opting-in. That is what “donate” means. No one can or should be able to presume I would make that choice. That is unless you see me, not as an individual, but as a bag of organs that would be used better by someone else.

I think this is very bad. We abandoned the human embryo to be harvested for biological material thinking that an embryo was not like us and so could be exploited for parts with no ill effect. But in doing so we made the deal that a human life maybe forfeit to save another.  We threw ourselves under the bus when we failed to protect the smallest and most innocent of our species and now we are all increasingly looking like harvestable biological material.

http://www.lifenews.com/2012/08/07/british-nhs-to-give-hospitals-money-to-pressure-organ-donations/
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« Reply #1 on: August 08, 2012, 07:03:40 am »

http://www.blacklistednews.com/news-711-0-12-12--.html

One Step Closer To Forced Organ Donation
Published on 23-07-2008


Source: AP

In five years, New Jersey residents seeking driver's licenses will have to decide whether they want to become organ donors under a new first-of-its kind law.

The names of residents who want to be organ donors will be maintained in a state registry, while those who decide against organ donation will have to acknowledge reviewing information about it.

"Ultimately, we want to move this important conversation out of the emergency room, where illness and injury already create a profound burden, and into the living room, where a thoughtful and deliberate decision can be reached without the pain of loss looming on the horizon," said Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey, who signed the bill into law Tuesday. Codey was filling in for Gov. Jon S. Corzine, who was in Israel.

Howard M. Nathan, president and CEO of the Gift of Life Donor Program, has said New Jersey would be the first state to impose such requirements.

The state has five years to get the program up and running. People who currently have licenses won't have to make their decision until they apply for a renewal. Individuals who aren't ready to decide may designate a decision-maker on their behalf.

The law, known as the New Jersey Hero Act, also makes the state the first to incorporate mandatory organ donation education into the high school curriculum, beginning with the 2009-10 school year.

At the collegiate level, institutions of higher education will be required to provide information on New Jersey's organ donor policies through student health services.

"We're raising the dialogue about organ donation and ensuring that New Jerseyans talk to their loved ones about the possibility of becoming a donor," said Sen. Joseph Vitale, a bill sponsor.

Cathleen Lewis, spokeswoman for the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, said about 1.75 million New Jersey residents have checked the organ donation box when applying for either a license or an identification card. That's 24.5 percent of the state's licenses and ID cards.

About 99,000 people in the United States await organ donations, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, including 3,050 in New Jersey.

Since 1995, more than 85,000 Americans have died waiting for an organ, including nearly 1,900 New Jerseyans, according to the network.

A recent national report card prepared by the educational group Donate Life America shows a 10 percent increase in donor designations over the last 18 months, bringing the total number of registered donors in the United States to nearly 70 million.

According to the group, 35 percent of licensed drivers and ID card holders have committed themselves to donation through a state registry or motor vehicle department.

"By increasing outreach and education, all New Jerseyans will be able to make better-informed decisions regarding organ and tissue donation," Assemblyman John F. McKeon said. "Ensuring every resident knows the vital importance of organ donation will make it easier for many more people to take the simple but truly heroic step that can help save a life."
 
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« Reply #2 on: August 08, 2012, 07:04:26 am »

requiring death before organ donation is unnecessary, say experts

Because organ donors are often alive when their organs are harvested, the medical community should not require donors to be declared dead, but instead adopt more “honest” moral criteria that allow the harvesting of organs from “dying” or “severely injured” patients, with proper consent, three leading experts have argued.

This approach, they say, would avoid the “pseudo-objective” claim that a donor is “really dead,” which is often based upon purely ideological definitions of death designed to expand the organ donor pool, and would allow organ harvesters to be more honest with the public, as well as ensure that donors don’t feel pain during the harvesting process.

rest: http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/shock-requiring-death-before-organ-donation-is-unnecessary-say-experts
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« Reply #3 on: August 08, 2012, 07:04:51 am »

Welsh proposal would allow organ harvesting without consent

The Welsh government has put forward a proposal that would allow hospitals to remove patients’ organs without their direct consent or the consent of their families.

Under current rules, people voluntarily opt in to organ donation by signing on to the organ donor registers. The proposed law would change the rules to allow doctors to presume consent unless the person has specifically said they did not want to donate their organs.

The Anglican archbishop of Wales, Dr. Barry Morgan, opposed the measure, saying the law would make peoples’ organs “assets of the state.”

UK Health Minister, Lesley Griffiths, defended the idea, saying she could not foresee situations in which doctors would take organs without the consent of families.

However, the proposal says clearly that doctors should “sensitively encourage relatives to accept the deceased’s wishes, whilst making it clear that the relatives do not have the right to override those wishes.”

Griffiths commented, “Repeated surveys show the majority of people in the UK and Wales believe in organ donation, but only one in three people in Wales have joined the organ donor register.

“Last year 67 per cent of donors were not on the organ donor register. Therefore we believe creating an environment in which donation is the norm and will enable more organs to be available.”

Presumed consent organ “harvesting” is a popular trend due to the scarcity of transplantable organs and the hesitation of the public to voluntarily put their names on the lists, prompting a number of governments around the world to try to adopt the measure.

Pro-life ethicists have been increasingly sounding the alarm about organ transplants, saying the only way to obtain suitable vital organs is to remove them from living patients. This problem has been skirted in the world of secular bioethics simply by redefining death. In many jurisdictions, “death” is now declared when a patient’s heart has stopped beating for five minutes or less, or when he is declared “brain dead,” the definition of which remains largely subjective and differs widely from place to place.

In the UK, the criteria used are neither “brain death” nor cardio-pulmonary cessation, both of which have been condemned by pro-life ethicists. In Britain “brain stem death” is the criteria accepted, which many, though not all, pro-life ethicists regard as true death. Proponents argue that if the brain stem is dead, both the brain and the cardio-pulmonary system are dead, since the brain stem is necessary for both.

Despite the ethical quagmire organ donation seems to be stuck in, organ “harvesting” in general continues to enjoy widespread acceptance, even at the Vatican, on the grounds that organ transplants save lives that would otherwise be needlessly lost. Because the public remains dubious, however, governments have stepped in to create the “negative billing” type of policy that allows doctors to remove organs without the time-consuming process of convincing relatives their loved ones are sufficiently dead to “harvest” their organs.

While the opt-out proposal is a dead letter at Westminster since the defeat of the Labour government, it is also being introduced in Northern Ireland whose devolved parliament has jurisdiction over health matters. Last month, Edwin Poots, the Northern Irish Health Minister, said he intends to raise the possibility of presumed consent.

This prompted warnings from pro-life watchdogs. Anthony McCarthy with the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said, “It is worrying that the minister is opening the door to the idea that the state, ultimately, owns people’s bodies after death.”

He called presumed consent “an oppressive attitude” and “an affront to human dignity which undermines us all.” The proposal, he said, “undermines the idea that human body parts are not like any other exchangeable commodity,” and reduces the human body to “mere property.”

With the popularity among ethicists for changing the definition of death to allow organs to be removed from living patients, McCarthy warned, “it is irresponsible in the extreme to further empower the state to remove the organs of those unable to speak for themselves.”

Liam Gibson of SPUC Northern Ireland said, “This is a worrying development and SPUC will be writing to the Minister and the Attorney General regarding the ethical concerns which would arise from a change in the law to facilitate the presumed consent of potential organ donors.”

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/welsh-proposal-would-allow-organ-harvesting-without-consent
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« Reply #4 on: August 08, 2012, 07:05:17 am »

21-Year-Old Man Wakes From Coma Before Doctors Take Organs

A 21-year-old man has awakened from a coma just hours before doctors were ready to shut off life support and take his organs for donation purposes.

Sam Schmid, an Arizona college student who was thought to be brain dead, recovered from injuries sustained in an automobile accident in October just hours before he was slated to be killed and his organs given to other patients.

The accident took the life of his best friend and college roomate and Schmid’s injuries were thought to be so grievous that a local hospital could not treat him and he was sent to Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Phoenix to receive surgery for a life-threatening aneurysm.

As hospital officials began palliative care and talked with his parents about organ donation, Schmid began to hold up two fingers on command and started walking with the aid of a walker. Now, his speech has improved and doctors say he will have a complete recovery.

“Nobody could ever give me a better Christmas present than this — ever, ever, ever,” his mother, Susan Regan, told ABC News. “I tell everyone, if they want to call it a modern-day miracle, this is a miracle. I have friends who are atheists who have called me and said, ‘I am going back to church.’”

Schmid told ABCNews.com, “I feel fine. I’m in a wheelchair, but I am getting lots of help.”

The case provides yet another example of what pro-life bioethicists like Wesley J. Smith have warned:  misjudging patients as too far gone too soon and relegating them to organ donor status:

For years, organ transplant ethicists and some in the bioethics community have agitated to change the definition of death from a purely biological determination, to one based in utilitarianism and desired sociological narratives. Why mess with death? Too few organs are donated for transplant, leading to long waiting lines and the deaths of some people who might be saved were organs more readily available.

But why redefine death? The point of this reckless advocacy — although they don’t put it this bluntly — is that there are thousands of perfectly good organs being used by people who really don’t need them anymore, by which they mean patients with profound cognitive impairments who will remain unconscious or minimally aware for the rest of their lives. Why not harvest such patients, this thinking goes, for the benefit of people who could return to normal lives?

The problem is that would break the “dead donor rule,” the legal and moral pact organ transplant medicine made with society promising that vital organs would only be harvested from patients who are truly dead. Hence, if the definition of death were loosened to include, say, a diagnosis of persistent vegetative state, more organs could be obtained — and the dead donor rule could still appear to be honored, deemed essential for transplant medicine to retain the trust of society.

Of course, that would be fiction, and the redefinition actually a betrayal. What these “ethicists” really propose is killing for organs, a view now being promoted in some of the world’s most prestigious medical, science, and bioethical journals. For example, Nature recently editorialized in favor of liberalizing the rules governing brain death.

Currently, brain death requires the irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain and each of its constituent parts. Nature’s editorial claimed — without proof — that doctors obey “the spirit but not the letter, of this law. And many are feeling uncomfortable about it.”


http://www.lifenews.com/2011/12/22/21-year-old-man-wakes-from-coma-before-doctors-take-organs/
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« Reply #5 on: August 08, 2012, 07:05:42 am »

Simply abandon the ‘norm against killing’ to solve organ transplant problem: leading US bioethicists

The conundrum faced by the organ transplant industry, that the removal of vital organs kills the “donor,” can be “easily obviated by abandoning the norm against killing,” two leading U.S. bioethicists have said. In an article titled, “What Makes Killing Wrong?” appearing in last month’s Journal of Medical Ethics, the authors have moved the argument forward by admitting that the practice of vital organ donation ignores “traditional” medical ethics.

“Traditional medical ethics embraces the norm that doctors … must not kill their patients. This norm is often seen as absolute and universal. In contrast, we have argued that killing by itself is not morally wrong, although it is still morally wrong to cause total disability.”

Traditional ethicists have responded, warning that this stream of thought, now common in the medical community, will ultimately undermine the right of anyone to life or the protection of law, and will annihilate public trust in the medical profession.

“If this dreadful doctrine is permitted and practised it is impossible to conjure up the degradation to which it will lead,” said Anthony Ozimic, communications manager of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC). A physician “has but to certify his patients as unproductive and he receives the command to kill.”

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong a Duke University bioethicist and Franklin G. Miller, an ethicist with the National Institutes of Health, the federal health authority in the US, admitted that patients who are routinely declared dead for purposes of organ “harvesting” are in fact alive and that removing their organs kills them.

Pro-life objectors to the practice of “non-heart beating organ donation” have long argued that it is tantamount to murdering helpless patients, reducing human persons to mere organ farms. The article proposes, however, that this is simply not a problem. Killing a patient who has lost all functional “abilities” and autonomy, “cannot disrespect her autonomy, because she has no autonomy left. It also cannot be unfair to kill her if it does her no harm.”

“Killing by itself is not morally wrong,” the authors said, “although it is still morally wrong to cause total disability.” The problem with killing is “not that the act causes loss of life or consciousness but rather that the act causes loss of all remaining abilities.”

Ozimic called the paper “obnoxious” and warned that its authors have “forgotten the lessons of the 20th century,” referring to the utilitarianism-based eugenics programmes of the pre-war Nazi government.

 
Clemens von GalenOzimic quoted the famous 1941 sermon of Clemens von Galen, Cardinal Archbishop of – known as the “Lion of Munster” for his opposition to the Nazi euthanasia programme: “Once admit the right to kill unproductive persons…  then none of us can be sure of his life.”

Ozimic said that if it is allowed to continue the concept will spell the end of our current understanding of medicine as doing good for human persons.

“We shall be at the mercy of any committee that can put a man on the list of unproductives. There will be no police protection, no court to avenge the murder and inflict punishment upon the murderer. Who can have confidence in any doctor?”

But the article’s authors admit that the situation is already grave from the point of view of traditional medical ethics. The so-called “dead donor rule,” they say, is already “routinely violated” in transplant practice anyway.

In order to be consistent with “traditional medical ethics” the practice of organ transplants, already a multi-billion dollar international medical industry, would have to be stopped immediately. But stopping organ transplants on the mere grounds that it kills people, they said, would be “extremely harmful and unreasonable from an ethical point of view.”

Ozimic critiqued the paper, saying, “According to some doctor, or because of the decision of some committee, they have no longer a right to live because they are ‘unproductive citizens’.

“The opinion is that since they can no longer make money, they are obsolete machines, comparable with some old cow that can no longer give milk or some horse that has gone lame. What is the lot of unproductive machines and cattle? They are destroyed.” But men and women, Ozimic said, are neither machines nor cattle who can be discarded when they no longer serve someone else’s needs. 

“Here we are dealing with human beings, with our neighbours, brothers and sisters, the poor and invalids . . . unproductive - perhaps! But have they, therefore, lost the right to live? Have you or I the right to exist only because we are ‘productive’?”

Shocking as it may sound to the layman’s ears, however, the article’s position is not unusual in the bioethics community. The notion that the value of human life is founded upon the individual’s abilities has become run-of-the-mill in universities and, more crucially, in hospital ethics committees. It was popularised by Peter Singer, the professor of ethics at Princeton University, who infamously proposed that parents have the power to convey personhood upon their newborn children and should be allowed to kill them at will.

The fixation on autonomy, one of the three “principles” that utilitarian secular bioethics regards as the ultimate indicators of human value, has driven much of the international pressure for legalised euthanasia. Around the world, secular bioethicists supported the killing of Terri Schindler Schiavo on the grounds that her “autonomy” was permanently impaired.

Experts have noted that this form of bioethics, as distinct from classical, Hippocratic medical ethics, has since the 1970s become the leading stream of thought in most medical organisations in developed countries. The movement has succeeded in legalising euthanasia in the Netherlands and Belgium and assisted suicide in three US states.

In addition to outright euthanasia and legalised assisted suicide, other means of killing patients are sneaking in under the legal radar in response to the demands of autonomy-obsessed Bioethics. “Terminal sedation” and death by dehydration or withdrawal of life-saving drugs and treatments have become common causes of death among elderly and disabled patients in the UK, Canada and across Europe.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/simply-abandon-the-norm-against-killing-to-solve-organ-transplant-problem-l
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« Reply #6 on: August 08, 2012, 07:06:04 am »

New Borns & Brain-Dead Patients To Be Kept Alive Until Organs Can Be Taken

The British Medical Association (BMA) will unveil a set of contentious proposals today to tackle Britain’s chronic organ shortage which leads to the deaths of 1,000 people a year. Currently, patients diagnosed as brain-dead are kept on an artificial ventilator only long enough for loved ones to say goodbye or for immediate emergency organ donation. But the BMA is recommending a controversial practice known as ‘elective ventilation’ where such patients are kept alive as long as is necessary to allow organ donation. The procedure is used in Spain and the US, and was trialled at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital in 1988 where it led to a 50 per cent increase in donations.  However, it was ruled unlawful by the Department of Health in 1994.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2100264/Brain-dead-patients-kept-alive-solely-organ-donors-controversial-plans-tackle-Britains-organ-shortage.html
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« Reply #7 on: August 08, 2012, 07:08:47 am »

Obama Regulation Czar Advocated Removing People’s Organs Without Explicit Consenthttp://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/53534
Friday, September 04, 2009
By Matt Cover

(CNSNews.com) – Cass Sunstein, President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), has advocated a policy under which the government would “presume” someone has consented to having his or her organs removed for transplantation into someone else when they die unless that person has explicitly indicated that his or her organs should not be taken.
 
Under such a policy, hospitals would harvest organs from people who never gave permission for this to be done. 
 
Outlined in the 2008 book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness,” Sunstein and co-author Richard H. Thaler argued that the main reason that more people do not donate their organs is because they are required to choose donation.
 
Sunstein and Thaler pointed out that doctors often must ask the deceased’s family members whether or not their dead relative would have wanted to donate his organs. These family members usually err on the side of caution and refuse to donate their loved one’s organs.
 
“The major obstacle to increasing [organ] donations is the need to get the consent of surviving family members,” said Sunstein and Thaler.
 
This problem could be remedied if governments changed the laws for organ donation, they said. Currently, unless a patient has explicitly chosen to be an organ donor, either on his driver’s license or with a donor card, the doctors assume that the person did not want to donate and therefore do not harvest his organs. Thaler and Sunstein called this “explicit consent.”
 
They argued that this could be remedied if government turned the law around and assumed that, unless people explicitly choose not to, then they want to donate their organs – a doctrine they call “presumed consent.”
 
“Presumed consent preserves freedom of choice, but it is different from explicit consent because it shifts the default rule. Under this policy, all citizens would be presumed to be consenting donors, but they would have the opportunity to register their unwillingness to donate,” they explained.
 
The difference between explicit and presumed consent is that under presumed consent, many more people “choose” to be organ donors. Sunstein and Thaler noted that in a 2003 study only 42 percent of people actively chose to be organ donors, while only 18 percent actively opted out when their consent was presumed.
 
In cases where the deceased’s wishes are unclear, Sunstein and Thaler argued that a “presumed consent” system would make it easier for doctors to convince families to donate their loved one’s organs.
 
Citing a 2006 study, Thaler and Sunstein wrote: “The next of kin can be approached quite differently when the decedent’s silence is presumed to indicate a decision to donate rather than when it is presumed to indicate a decision not to donate. This shift may make it easier for the family to accept organ donation.”
 
The problem of the deceased’s family is only one issue, Sunstein and Thaler said, admitting that turning the idea of choice on its head will invariably run into major political problems, but these are problems they say the government can solve through a system of “mandated choice.”
 
“Another [problem] is that it is a hard sell politically,” wrote Sunstein and Thaler. “More than a few people object to the idea of ‘presuming’ anything when it comes to such a sensitive matter. For these reasons we think that the best choice architecture for organ donations is mandated choice.”
 
Mandated choice is a process where government forces you to make a decision – in this case, whether to opt out of being an organ donor to get something you need, such as a driver’s license.
 
“With mandated choice, renewal of your driver’s license would be accompanied by a requirement that you check a box stating your organ donation preferences,” the authors stated. “Your application would not be accepted unless you had checked one of the boxes.”
 
To ensure that people’s decisions align with the government policy of more organ donors, Sunstein and Thaler counseled that governments should follow the state of Illinois’ example and try to influence people by making organ donation seem popular.
 
“First, the state stresses the importance of the overall problem (97,000 people [in Illinois] on the waiting list and then brings the problem home, literally (4,700 in Illinois),” they wrote.
 
“Second, social norms are directly brought into play in a way that build on the power of social influences [peer pressure]: ‘87 percent of adults in Illinois feel that registering as an organ donor is the right thing to do’ and ’60 percent of adults in Illinois are registered,’” they added.
 
Sunstein and Thaler reminded policymakers that people will generally do what they think others are doing and what they believe others think is right. These presumptions, which almost everyone has, act as powerful factors as policymakers seek to design choices.
 
“Recall that people like to do what most people think is right to do; recall too that people like to do what most people actually do,” they wrote. “The state is enlisting existing norms in the direction of lifestyle choices.”
 
Thaler and Sunstein believed that this and other policies are necessary because people don’t really make the best decisions.
 
“The false assumption is that almost all people, almost all of the time, make choices that are in their best interest or at the very least are better than the choices that would be made [for them] by someone else,” they said.
 
This means that government “incentives and nudges” should replace “requirements and bans,” they argued.
 
Neither Sunstein nor Thaler currently are commenting on their book, a spokesman for the publisher, Penguin Group, told CNSNews.com.
 
In a question-and-answer section on the Amazon.com Web site, Thaler and Sunstein answered a few questions about their book.
 
When asked what the title “Nudge” means and why people need to be nudged, the authors stated: “By a nudge we mean anything that influences our choices. A school cafeteria might try to nudge kids toward good diets by putting the healthiest foods at front.
 
“We think that it's time for institutions, including government, to become much more user-friendly by enlisting the science of choice to make life easier for people and by gently nudging them in directions that will make their lives better,” they wrote.
 
“…The human brain is amazing, but it evolved for specific purposes, such as avoiding predators and finding food,” said Thaler and Sunstein. “Those purposes do not include choosing good credit card plans, reducing harmful pollution, avoiding fatty foods, and planning for a decade or so from now. Fortunately, a few nudges can help a lot. …”

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« Reply #8 on: August 08, 2012, 07:09:31 am »

Implementing Presumed Consent for Organ Donation in Israel:
Public, Religious and Ethical Issues


http://www.ima.org.il/imaj/ar07nov-2.pdf

Ori Scott1* and Eyal Jacobson MD PhD 1,2
1 Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
2 Department of Family Medicine, Clalit Health Services, Haifa and Western Galilee District, Israel

Excerpted from the Report:

Current Israeli policy regarding cadaver organ donation

The constant organ shortage has raised a debate on the harvesting
policy of cadaver organs. In many countries, such as the U.S,
Great Britain, Canada and Australia, procurement of an organ
requires explicit consent of the donor prior to his or her death
[5].

This policy, known as the “expressed consent” or “opting-in”
system, is also customary in Israel [3]. According to this policy,
if a person wishes to donate his organs upon death, he must
specify as such by signing a donor card. Ethically, this policy
relies on the assumption that “express or explicit consent is always
prospective informed consent” [6].

In other words, a person who has registered as a donor is fully informed regarding organ
donation and all its aspects and is therefore allowed to give his
or her consent to this procedure. This clear, active consent is
derived from the full autonomy a person has over his body [7].
However, the fact that a person has “opted in” is not sufficient
for organ procurement to take place. The agreement of the next
of kin is also needed. Refusal of the deceased person’s family
will thus prevent the donation, even if the person has signed a
donor card during his or her life [2,7].

According to the Israeli National Center for Transplantation,
only 4% of the Israeli population has signed an organ donor
card (known as an “Adi” card). As for the families, less than 50%
of them are willing to donate their relatives’ organs [3]. These
refusal rates of families are similar to the data reported in the
U.S. [5].

In contrast to countries in which the expressed consent policy
is anchored in legislation, in Israel the situation is completely
different. The law relating to the organ donation issue is the Law
of Anatomy and Pathology. Section 6 of that law states that a
doctor is allowed to operate on a body and use any part of it in
order to save life. This is subject to one condition: namely, three
doctors qualified for this task must sign a document declaring
that the operation is indeed being performed for the purpose of
saving a life. The law states that, by definition, cornea, kidney
and skin transplantations are also considered life-saving procedures.
The law does not require the approval of either the donor
or the family. However, there is the obligation to notify the family
before the operation takes place [8]. Clearly, not only does the
law ignore the question of expressed consent, it also leaves the
individual with no option of objecting to the harvesting of his or
her organs upon death.

An attempt to implement the above law was made at the
Soroka Medical Center in Beer Sheva in 1993, when the organs of
a deceased individual were taken before his family’s permission
had been given. This event led to a major crisis in the delicate
relationship between doctors and the public; it also caused a
sharp decrease in the rate of donor card signing that year [9].
For that reason, organ procurement in Israel de facto is conducted
according to the expressed consent policy.

What is presumed consent?

The presumed consent policy has proved
to be an effective manner of organ procurement

One of the strategies conceived to increase the number of available
organs is the presumed consent doctrine. This policy is
based on the assumption that “everyone, as a matter of course,
would agree to have her or his organs harvested upon death”
[1].

Hence, a qualified doctor or a clerk can determine that the
organs of a person who died in a hospital can be taken for the
purpose of transplantation or research [7]. Despite the above,
an option is granted to any person to object to the removal
of his/her organs, whereby the individual’s name is added to a
national “opt-out” registry. In this manner, a well-documented
pool of donor-objectors is created and maintained by the responsible
authority [2,7].

Procurement coordinators are obliged to check this registry when
facing a potential deceased donor in the hospital [2].

A person who had not opted out in advance
is considered upon death as a donor, and for that reason the
doctor has no obligation to receive family authorization for the
procurement process [1,10].

Implementing the presumed consent doctrine in
different countries
The policy of presumed consent can be implemented either
stringently or leniently. In the former (the stringent manner), the
doctor is granted two discretionary options: the first is the power
to provide the consent for organ donation of every deceased
person who has not “opted-out” formally in advance. The second
is the ability to procure the organs despite an objection of the
donor’s next of kin. In the lenient manner, in the absence of any
documentation the default option would still be to procure the
deceased’s organs (this is in complete contradiction to informed
consent). Nevertheless, in contradiction to the stringent interpretation,
here the donor’s family does have the right to participate
in the process and to prevent the donation [2,7].
Currently, the European countries that have adopted the
Presumed Consent policy are Austria, Belgium, Finland, France,
Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Countries that act
according to the Expressed Consent policy are Australia, Canada,
Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Israel, The Netherlands, Great Britain
and the U.S. Among those countries that have embraced the
Presumed Consent policy, Austria is the only one in which
the policy is implemented in its stringent sense; in the othercountries mentioned above the lenient interpretation was applied
[2].
In recent years, attempts have been made to evaluate the
efficiency of the presumed consent policy in organ procurement.
In general, it was found that cadaveric organ donation rates were
25–30% higher in presumed consent countries [5].

In a comparative study conducted among six European countries in 1990,
organ transplantation rates were significantly higher in Belgium,
France and Austria which operate under the opting-out system,
as compared to Great Britain, Germany and The Netherlands that
operate under a system of opting-in. In Belgium for instance, an
increase of 140% in the number of available organs was reported
that year, following its transition from expressed to presumed
consent [11].

Another example of the influence of presumed
consent is seen in two transplantation centers in Belgium – one
in Leuven and the other in Antwerp. Leuven shifted to presumed
consent as soon as the law was passed in Belgium, and within
3 years the donation rates in that center climbed from 15 to 40
donors per million people. In contrast, Antwerp, which did not
change its procuring policy, showed no change in donation rates
[12]. More examples can be found in Spain and Italy [2,4,7].

There are several ways in which presumed consent laws can
generate higher donation rates. The first, and most obvious, is
that these laws allow for the next of kin’s wishes to be ignored
during the procurement process.
However, this explanation can only be true for Austria, where the policy is
implemented in the stringent sense. This is clearly not the case for other countries.

Another way in which presumed consent laws may be influential
is by functioning as a “signaling device to the population at
large and next of kin in particular” [2]. The existence of a presumed
consent law shifts the question that the donors and their
families face. Instead of asking families if they have a reason to
believe that the deceased would have agreed to donate, they
are asked whether they think the deceased would have objected to
the donation.

Moreover, with regard to public opinion, presumed
consent laws and changing the default from “No” to “Yes” actually
reflect a social norm concerning the expected course of action,
although the right to refuse the donation still exists [2]. This last
assumption regarding the social norm has been proven correct;
in contrast to the U.S and Great Britain where about 40–50% of
the families refuse the donation of their beloved ones’ organs,
in France the rate of family refusal is about 30% and in Spain as
low as 20% [5,13].

An international survey of transplantation professionals
showed that 75% of the responders supported presumed consent
legislation and 39% acknowledged this kind of legislation as the
most efficient means of increasing organ donation rates, thus
placing it first among all other methods proposed in the survey
[5].

(Read the full report at the source link).
------------------------------------------------------

Two points:
1. You can be sure Cass Sunstein is using this report as his 'guide'.
2. You can also be sure that Palestinians' organs have been removed under 'presumed consent'.

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« Reply #9 on: August 08, 2012, 07:10:22 am »

New York considers organ harvesting

A  member of the New York Assembly has introduced a "Presumed Consent" organ harvesting bill.

Under Assemblyman Richard Brodsky's proposal, everyone would become automatically enrolled as candidates for organ harvesting, and those who object would have to formally opt out. Jason McGuire, legislative director for New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms (NYCF), comments that there is a privacy concern -- but more importantly, a moral one as well.

"One of the concerns is how soon organs would be harvested from an individual," he points out. "So it puts a doctor in a difficult position of having to decide between the life that looks like it is ending and how soon his organs can be harvested to potentially save another life that is awaiting an organ."

That issue has increasingly alarmed the pro-life community and the families of supposedly "brain dead" patients who are still alive. Under Brodsky's bill, families would lose their right to make major decisions concerning those patients.

And McGuire notes that "while many people, particularly of the Christian faith, would support organ donation, there are many other people of religious belief here in the states that believe it would be a defilement of the body. If it isn't one of those issues of an automatic organ harvesting, there'd be no time to even ascertain what...the religious beliefs of the individual [are]," he adds.

The NYCF legislative director believes organ donation ought to remain a personal decision, not something forced on a person by the state. He also supports education programs that encourage people to donate organs.

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Politics/Default.aspx?id=999924
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« Reply #10 on: August 08, 2012, 07:10:48 am »

State plan volunteers all to donate organs, tissue
'You are automatically deemed to have consented'


A plan that is being pushed now in the state of Colorado by two Democratic lawmakers would allow the government to assume that its residents want to donate their organs or tissue.

"The bill changes the organ donation program so that a person is presumed to have consented to organ and tissue donations at the time the person applies for or renews a driver's license or identification card unless the person initials a statement that states that the person does not want to be considered as a possible organ and tissue donor," states the summary of the bill posted online by the state's 68th General Assembly.

Carrying the plan in the state House is Rep. Dan Pabon, a Democrat from Denver, and in the Senate Sen. Lucia Guzman, also a Denver Democrat.

It calls for state administrators to present to applicants the statement:

    You are automatically deemed to have consented to being an organ and tissue donor and this designation will appear on your driver's license or identification card. If you do not want to be considered an organ and tissue donor, you must elect to not be included on the organ donor registry by inserting your initials on the line below.

The proposed statute changes, which apparently would be a first if adopted, provide that "the consent is sufficient to satisfy all requirements necessary to evidence the applicant's consent to anatomical donation of the applicant's organs and tissue."

Read more: State plan volunteers all to donate organs, tissue http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=253457#ixzz1BcZwm3qM

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« Reply #11 on: August 08, 2012, 07:11:22 am »

First Trial against an US Surgeon for Killing a Patient to Harvest Organs Begins

By Jonquil Frankham

CALIFORNIA, November 6, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A San Francisco surgeon is undergoing trial for allegedly hastening the death of a terminally ill patient to harvest his vital organs.

The case against Hootan Roozrokh is believed to be the first of its kind brought against an American transplant surgeon.



Rosa Navarro, the patient’s mother, successfully filed suit against the hospital where the patient died and received $250,000 in compensation. Now the District Attorney’s office is pressing charges against the 34-year-old surgeon for “dependent adult abuse, administering a harmful substance and prescribing controlled substances without a legitimate medical purpose.”

Roozrokh is also being charged with giving the 25-year old Ruben Navarro an antiseptic called Betadine, normally administered to an organ donor after death, via feeding tube to the stomach. Some commentators suggest the antiseptic was ultimately responsible for the patient’s death.

Roozrokh attempted to induce what is known as “cardiac death,” a new criteria for determining “death,” by delivering abnormally high doses of painkillers in order to retrieve vital organs from Ruben Navarro. “Cardiac death” is distinct from “brain death,” an older criterion for determining death that requires a cessation of all brain function prior to harvesting vital organs.

Toronto physician and LifeSiteNews medical adviser Dr. John Shea, MD, FRCP (C), says that in order to determine if a patient meets the “cardiac death” criteria the patient’s respirator is removed while the heart is still beating.

“If the heart stopped beating within an hour, the surgeon waited two to five minutes before taking out the organs. If the heart had not stopped beating within an hour, the patient would be returned to a hospital bed to die without any further treatment,” writes Dr. Shea.

On January 29, 2006, Ruben Navarro stopped breathing on his own, and was put on a respirator. On February 3 he still had not recovered consciousness, though his mother claimed she saw “signs of recovery.”

Medical staff then removed Navarro to the operating room and withdrew his respirator, claiming that hospital policy required them to “pull the plug” after five days on life support without patient recovery. Navarro continued to live, however, and Dr. Roozrokh, is reported to have then told nurses, “Let's just give him some more candy.” The patient was given high doses of morphine and Ativan to hasten death.

Navarro’s heart continued to beat, and after one hour his organs were no longer considered useable. He was removed from the operating room and died several hours later.

Besides the ambiguity surrounding the actual moment of death, Dr. Shea writes that harvesting organs at either the point of brain death or cardiac death creates a conflict of interest on the part of the attending physician and fosters a “utilitarian” approach to life and death.

According to California state law, in order to avoid potential conflicts of interest, transplant surgeons cannot direct the care of potential donors while the patient is still in treatment. In this case, however, sources have reported to police that, contrary to that requirement, Dr. Roozrokh was directing the administration of drugs to Mr. Navarro while in the operating room.

Writing about the “utilitarian rationale” behind the invention of the “brain death” criterion, Shea says that “it was no longer the interest of the dying to avoid being declared ‘dead’ prematurely, but the community’s interest in declaring a dying person dead as soon as possible.” Shea’s criticisms would also apply to the “cardiac death” criterion.

The utilitarian approach to life and death that is increasingly pervading the organ donation industry is obvious from an article published this October by two Oxford scholars, which suggests that, rather than ensuring that brain death and cardiac death are indeed true death, “we could abandon the dead donor rule," as LifeSiteNews reported.

“We could for example, allow organs to be taken from people who are not brain dead, but who have suffered such severe injury that they would be permanently unconscious, like Terry Schiavo, who would be allowed to die anyway by removal of their medical treatment," wrote Julian Savulescu, the Uehiro Chair of Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, and neonatologist and Oxford graduate student Dominic Wilkinson

Bioethics International writes that the Roozrokh case “is likely to raise uneasiness among potential organ donors and could prompt doctors to shy away from a somewhat controversial practice of retrieving organs before a patient is brain dead.”

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/nov/08110607.html

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« Reply #12 on: August 08, 2012, 07:11:41 am »

Euthanasia and Organ Harvesting
“No Longer Science Fiction:”


The writers even nodded to Kevorkian’s contribution to the debate:

The irresistible utilitarian appeal of organ transplantation has us hell-bent on increasing the donor pool…Are we headed for the utilitarian utopia espoused by Jack Kevorkian, where organ retrieval and scientific experimentation are options in every planned death, be it mercy killing or execution?  If a look into such a future hurts our eyes, (or turns our stomachs) is our discomfort any different from what we would have experienced 30 years ago by looking into the future that is today?

Opponents of legalizing euthanasia—of which I am one—were well aware of these and other articles, which served to normalize the idea of coupling physician-prescribed death with organ procurement and transplantation.  But, we knew of no cases where the deeds had actually been coupled.  So we waited, fearing that the shoe would drop, but praying it would not.


http://www.tothesource.org/3_30_2011/3_30_2011.htm
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2011/03/31/euthanasia-and-organ-harvesting/
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« Reply #13 on: August 08, 2012, 07:15:44 am »

Remove Kidneys for Transplant Before Donor's Death


http://gma.yahoo.com/surgeon-remove-kidneys-transplant-donors-death-162522325--abc-news-health.html

By KIM CAROLLO | Good Morning America
The severe shortage of viable organs for transplantation in the U.S. has led a transplant surgeon to propose harvesting kidneys from people who are not dead yet.

Dr. Paul Morrissey, an associate professor of surgery at Brown University's Alpert Medical School, wrote in The American Journal of Bioethics that the protocol known as donation after cardiac death -- meaning death as a result of irreversible damage to the cardiovascular system -- has increased the number of organs available for transplant, but has a number of limitations, including the need to wait until the heart stops.

Because of the waiting time, Morrissey said that about one-third of potential donors end up not being able to donate, and many organs turn out to not be viable as a result.

Instead, he argues in favor of procuring kidneys from patients with severe irreversible brain injury whose families consent to kidney removal before their cardiac and respiratory systems stop functioning.

"These individuals, maintained on mechanical ventilation, do not meet the criteria for brain death," he wrote. In these cases, the patient would be removed from life support and kidneys would be harvested while ensuring that the patient receives anesthesia and pain relief during the operation. After that, the patients would be kept comfortable until they have not had a pulse for five minutes, a threshold at which they are declared dead.

"Under this protocol, the donor is alive at the time of kidney recovery, but a determination has been made and confirmed by medical experts that death is imminent," he wrote.

Kidney removal, he stressed, would not cause the death of the donor, which is "instead caused foremost by the original catastrophic injury and secondarily by terminating mechanical ventilation."

In addition to providing more organs usable for transplant, Morrissey said this revised protocol would allow families to grieve in peace, since surgeons wouldn't need to rush the body into the operating room to remove organs. He said they could also take comfort in the knowledge that their loved one's death saved other lives.

A number of experts responded to Morrissey's proposal in commentaries published in the same journal. Some supported his arguments, while others expressed concern that it wouldn't be in the donor's best interests and could potentially violate medical ethics and the law.
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« Reply #14 on: August 08, 2012, 07:23:42 am »

Sunstein: Take organs from 'helpless patients'
'Though it may sound grotesque, routine removal would save lives'




Obamas Ghoul

TEL AVIV – President Obama's newly confirmed regulatory czar defended the possibility of removing organs from terminally ill patients without their permission.

Cass Sunstein also has strongly pushed for the removal of organs from deceased individuals who did not explicitly consent to becoming organ donors.

In his 2008 book, "Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness," Sunstein and co-author Richard Thaler discussed multiple legal scenarios regarding organ donation. One possibility presented in the book, termed by Sunstein as "routine removal," posits that "the state owns the rights to body parts of people who are dead or in certain hopeless conditions, and it can remove their organs without asking anyone's permission."

"Though it may sound grotesque, routine removal is not impossible to defend," wrote Sunstein. "In theory, it would save lives, and it would do so without intruding on anyone who has any prospect for life."

Sunstein continued: "Although this approach is not used comprehensively by any state, many states do use the rule for corneas (which can be transplanted to give some blind patients sight). In some states, medical examiners performing autopsies are permitted to remove corneas without asking anyone's permission."

Sunstein's example of medical examiners removing corneas, however, applies only to patients who are already declared deceased.

After defending the position, Sunstein conceded the "routine removal" approach "violates a generally accepted principle, which is that within broad limits, individuals should be able to decide what is to be done with and to their bodies."

Still, Sunstein did not add that the removal of organs from a living individual should be banned.

Also in the same book, CNS News previously noted Sunstein argued for removing organs from deceased patients who are not registered as organ donors, a policy not without precedent. Spain and some European Union countries have been debating accepting a law of implied consent.

Writes Sunstein: "A policy that can pass libertarian muster by our standards is called presumed consent."

"Presumed consent preserves freedom of choice, but it is different from explicit consent because it shifts the default rule. Under this policy, all citizens would be presumed to be consenting donors, but they would have the opportunity to register their unwillingness to donate, and they could do so easily. We want to underline the word easily, because the harder it is to register your unwillingness to participate, the less libertarian the policy becomes."

Sunstein continues: "Although presumed consent is an extremely effective way to increase the supply of organs available for transplant, it may not be an easy sell politically. Some will object to the idea of 'presuming' anything when it comes to such a sensitive matter. We are not sure that these objections are convincing, but this is surely a domain in which forced choosing, or what is referred to in this domain as mandated choice, has considerable appeal."

Sunstein advocates making it mandatory for all citizens to register either as an organ donor or as unwilling to donate their organs.

"Mandated choice could be implemented through a simple addition to the driver's license registration scheme used in many states. With mandated choice, renewal of your driver's license would be accompanied by a requirement that you check a box stating your organ donation preferences. Your application would not be accepted unless you had checked one of the boxes. The options might include 'yes, willing to donate' and 'no, unwilling to donate.'"

Government must fund abortion

Sunstein is not shy about his view concerning rights to life or abortion.

WND reported that in his 1993 book, "The Partial Constitution," Sunstein argued the government should be required to fund abortion in cases such as **** or incest.

"I have argued that the Constitution ... forbids government from refusing to pay the expenses of abortion in cases of **** or incest, at least if government pays for childbirth in such cases," Sunstein wrote.

The Obama czar asserts that funding only childbirth but not abortion "has the precise consequence of turning women into involuntary incubators."

Sunstein argues that refusing to fund abortion "would require poor women to be breeders," while co-opting women's bodies "in the service of third parties" – referring to fetuses.

Sunstein wrote he has no problem with forcing taxpayers to fund abortions even if they morally object to their money being used for such a purpose.

He wrote: "There would be no tension with the establishment clause if people with religious or other objections were forced to pay for that procedure (abortion). Indeed, taxpayers are often forced to pay for things – national defense, welfare, certain forms of art, and others – to which they have powerful moral and even religious objections."

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=112757
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« Reply #15 on: August 08, 2012, 07:24:26 am »

Chinese Mobile Death Vans!



China is equipping its courts with mobile execution vans as it shifts away from the communist system's traditional bullet in the head, towards a more "civilized" use of lethal injection.

Intermediate Courts of the southern province of Yunnan were issued with 18 new execution vans on February 28 and a court official said some have already been used.

"We cannot tell you how many executions so far, otherwise you could work out from the daily rate how many we carry out," the official said.

Chinese authorities keep execution numbers a secret, but Western human rights monitors believe it is about 15,000 a year, more than the rest of the world's judicial executions combined.

The death penalty can apply for serious crimes against the person, armed robbery, drug trafficking, major cases of corruption and political violence.

Many public executions have been held in football stadiums so traditional execution methods are no secret. The condemned criminal is taken by open truck to the execution ground and made to kneel with hands cuffed and head bowed, before being shot in the head. Families who want to reclaim the body are charged for the bullet.

China's legal system allows only one appeal and lawyers say that less than 20 per cent of defendants have professional legal representation. When appeals against the death penalty are rejected, the sentence is carried out immediately, sometimes within hours.

In Yunnan, as well as in the cities of Harbin and Shanghai, death on the road has replaced death row. The execution vans are converted 24-seater buses. The windowless execution chamber at the back contains a metal bed on which the prisoner is strapped down. A police officer presses a button and an automatic syringe plunges a lethal drug into the prisoner's vein. The execution can be watched on a video monitor next to the driver's seat and be recorded if required. Court officials say the lethal drug was devised by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences to meet two criteria: that it causes no sharp pain or emotional upset for the prisoner and that it works within 30 to 60 seconds.

Although the vans cost about 500,000 yuan ($A100,000) each, officials say the method is cheaper and requires less manpower than traditional executions, because land for traditional execution grounds is not cheap. But the main impetus was a law passed in 1995, making lethal injection an alternative to the bullet.

Yunnan officials say most prisoners and their families prefer the injection.

"When they know they can't be pardoned, they accept this method calmly, and have less fear," one official told the Chinese Life Weekly.

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« Reply #16 on: August 08, 2012, 07:24:49 am »

ORGANized crime
Americans are using Chinese prisoners as spare parts!
- - - - - - - - - - - -
by Erik Baard and Rebeccah Cooney

 

Three years ago, Dr. Thomas Diflo's moral nightmare walked into his examination room: a patient freshly implanted with a kidney bought from China's death row, where prisoners are killed sometimes for minor offenses and their organs harvested.

Since then, Dr. Diflo, director of the renal transplant program at the New York University Medical Center, has seen half a dozen such people, typically young Chinese American women. The surgeon says his patients weren't distressed about snatching organs from the condemned, but he was overwhelmed by the implications.

Unable to shoulder the burden alone, on January 11, Diflo took his "horror at a real ethical quagmire" to the medical center's Ethics Committee.

Diflo is the first American doctor to talk publicly about this experience. The gruesome practice has been documented among ethnic Chinese communities throughout Asia, but so far every attempt to prove that people were leaving U.S. soil to buy organs from China's massive death row has failed.

"To tell you the truth, the original rationale for bringing this situation to the Ethics Committee was my own discomfort in taking care of these patients. I was outraged at the way in which they obtained their organs, and I had a great deal of difficulty separating that fact from the care of the patient," Diflo told New York City's Village Voice.

"Several patients were very up-front and candid about it, that they bought an organ taken from an executed convict for about $10,000," Diflo recalls. "Most of the patients are ecstatic to be off of dialysis, and none has seemed particularly perturbed regarding the source of the organs."

There's no telling how many kidney buyers returning to the U.S. have gone for follow-up care at a less elite institution or stayed within secretive medical channels recommended by their brokers. Diflo gets his patients on referral from recognized hospitals. "Patients sort of arrive on their doorstep and they don't know what to do. Not everybody who's had a transplant is cared for by a transplant specialist. I tend to see the more complicated ones," Diflo says.

Of all medical disciplines, organ transplantation is perhaps the most bittersweet. Transplants are gifts that coax life from death, that close the door for one person while opening the future for another. But the outright sale of organs is abhorrent to nearly all surgeons in the field. Selling organs is a felony under a 1984 federal law that was spearheaded by then senator Al Gore, and is punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $50,000. Live or executed prisoners in the U.S. are forbidden to donate an organ, even for free, except to family members under special circumstances.

In China, human rights groups say citizens have been executed for nonviolent offenses like taking bribes, credit card theft, small-scale tax evasion, and stealing truckloads of vegetables. Political dissidents have also been sentenced to death. Chinese embassy officials did not respond to requests for comment, but in the past the government has denied promoting the for-profit organ trade.

Diflo says he and his colleagues wrestled with the issue in a debate that was "quite lively and revealing, but the bottom line was that we take care of patients who come to us, regardless of their situation moral, ethical, financial, or social. Although I might find what they had done reprehensible, I was still nonetheless obligated to care for them in the best way that I knew how, and that is what I do."

But Diflo refuses to let it end at that. "Because it is not really appropriate for me to take my outrage out on the patients who come to me, I began to think that I would be better off addressing the root problem, the pilfering of organs from prisoners in China. That is what pushed me to pursue this further," he says. And so he's going public.

America-based human rights activists have sought this break for years.

The trafficking of human organs from Chinese executions to American residents is "something we've always known was going on but something we've never been able to document," says an American investigator working for the Laogai Research Foundation, a group founded by renowned human rights crusader Harry Wu and named for the gulags of China.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation partnered with Wu in 1998 in a sting operation aimed at netting two suspected organ brokers who resided in Queens. Wu posed as a board member of a renal clinic in Aruba and got the men, Wang Cheng Yong and Fu Xingqi, to not only arrange for patients to fly to China for kidneys but to also smuggle corneas, which can keep for weeks when frozen, for sale abroad. The case was dismissed when a key witness fled the U.S. and refused to return to testify. The Laogai Research Foundation also discovered a doctor advertising himself as an organ broker in a Chinese-language newspaper published in the U.S. but no physical evidence was ever uncovered. In 1998, the FBI raided the Los Angeles offices of a man the feds said had presented himself as an organ broker, but it's unclear whether the scheme led to any transplants.

When told that an American doctor was revealing his experiences, the laogai investigator, who asked that she not be identified because it would make her work in China impossible, pointed out that the opening comes at a critical time. Executions in China have surged to 400 in April alone as the Communist government conducts another of its periodic "strike hard" crackdowns on crime. During the most recent campaign, in 1996, more than 4,000 prisoners were killed, she said.

Even in a normal year China executes more inmates than in all other nations combined, reports Amnesty International. In 1999, the confirmed toll reached 1,263, according to the organization, which gathers its statistics from tallies published, for propaganda purposes, in government-run newspapers.

"It's for scaring criminals and scaring controlling society," the investigator says. The approach is known as "killing the chicken to scare the monkey."

Executions often come in floods, usually around the holidays, according to the investigator. This month, with Labor Day celebrations that started May 1, is viewed by Chinese doctors as a particularly good time to get an organ, but there's no better time than the Lunar New Year, she added. Most perhaps 70 percent of the hospitals performing the procedures are run by the military, which has the best connections to the penal system and can be present at executions, she explains. Money from patients purchasing organs is dispersed among those who provide access to the prisoner's body. Hospitals even pay judges to tip them off when they sentence a suitable donor to death. "The money goes to officials all of the way up the line," she says. "It goes to the courts, the people in charge of the prisons. It goes to the doctors, the hospitals, everything."

The Laogai Research Foundation reports that sometimes tens of operations are done at the same hospital on the same day for patients who are essentially walk-ins. China says it has performed about 25,000 transplants in 20 years, but makes no distinction between organs culled from executions and those garnered through accidents and live donors.

Forced labor from China's laogai has always been a source of cash for the country's rapidly advancing economy. And punishment doesn't necessarily end at the point of death, usually a single shot to the back of the head. Families are often forced to pay for the bullet used. But the laogai turned into Execution, Inc. less than 20 years ago after the introduction of Cyclosporine, an immunosuppressant drug that prevents rejection of organs by the recipient's body.

Wei Jingsheng, an agitator at Columbia University's Human Rights Center, testified before the International Relations Committee and Government Reform & Oversight Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives on June 4, 1998, that while he was on death row a guard confided that often organ removal is the means of execution in and of itself. Wei, who now heads his own foundation in Washington, D.C., stated that the guard told him, "There are almost no exceptions. They first are given anesthesia. Just the same as killing a pig. We use cloth to wrap them up and bring them to the execution ground. No one cares if they are alive or dead."

Further, Wei said he had confirmed, through a plan hatched with a 20-year-old cellmate, that executed prisoners were being harvested against their will. The young man, whom he called Zhang, was to cry out, "I'm not sick, I don't need a doctor," if he saw a medical team equipped to harvest his organs waiting at his execution. If there was no evidence of this, Zhang was to scream as the condemned normally would.

After a long stretch of silence, Zhang sent the message. "My first feeling was of satisfaction, knowing that this evidence finally proved this practice. But this feeling was quickly replaced by another," Wei told the congressional committees. "My second feeling was of heaviness, knowing that this young man used his life to record an unbelievable crime. If I did not have the opportunity to tell others of this evil, if I did not have the opportunity to try and stop this evil from continuing, then I would have to apologize to this young man. All this time, I have deeply felt this responsibility. We must stop this practice."

Harry Wu spent 19 years in the laogai, and has also testified before Congress. His Laogai Research Foundation claims that when bullets are used, the target reflects the market: a shot to the head when a liver's wanted, a shot to the chest when corneas are in demand. Amnesty International also reports that a form of lethal injection gaining acceptance in China can be used to kill without damaging crucial organs, and can blur the line between life and death.

Young, nonsmoking prisoners are given blood tests and medical exams to assess compatibility with arriving patients, the investigator explains, and courts set execution dates accordingly.

Long before the U.S. and China clashed in the spy plane incident, the West was wary of the emerging superpower. Wei and Wu have edged the organ trade into the human rights spotlight on China, an arena already crowded with accusations of prison and child labor, coerced abortions, and suppression of religious minorities and Tibetan national aspirations. The nation's trade surplus with America, chilling of freedoms in Hong Kong, and occasional saber rattling at Taiwan have done little to soften sentiments in Washington. Business interests striving to engage China as a strategic ally, rather than competitor through most-favored-nation trade status, membership in the World Trade Organization, and support for its bid to host the Olympics may have a tougher row to hoe now that Diflo is delivering the goods on an explosive Chinese crime that touches on American soil.

Suddenly, what had existed largely as a kind of urban legend, a science-fiction horror story from a distant world, has become very, very real, right here on the streets of New York. Activists say that if it's happening here, it's likely happening in other large cities of North America, from Boston and San Francisco to Vancouver and Los Angeles.

The Chinese government published regulations in 1990‹"On the Use of Dead Bodies or Organs From Condemned Criminals" stating that for a prisoner to be a donor, prior consent must be given by that person or remaining family, unless the body is unclaimed. Human rights activists scoff at that statement, noting that since prisoners are often kept from communicating with family members, there is no one to claim the body, which is harvested and cremated almost immediately. The government also requires that medical teams involved in the procurement of organs act stealthily: "Surgical vans must not display hospital logos; surgeons must not wear hospital uniforms when at the execution site; guards must be present until the organ is removed; and the corpses should be promptly cremated following the removal of the organs."

Human rights groups seeking to determine the source of organs might try matching the dates of operations to dates of executions in the same city, but the method isn't reliable, especially since the government has taken to selectively publicizing its tallies. The Laogai Research Foundation says doctors speaking for the Chinese government claim regulations against contacting the family of a donor prevent them from revealing to patients where the organs come from.

The harvesting enrages physicians like Dr. Diflo. "I think it's a gross violation of human rights and very much at odds with what the transplant community tries to promulgate as the way to go about things. This does not involve appropriate consent. I don't think prisoners are given the option of donating or not donating. It's not done from an altruistic point of view," Diflo says. Even putting aside his reservations about the death penalty, Diflo says, "The central issue is the nonconsensual taking of organs and making human body parts a commodity."

The Laogai investigator agrees. "It's very obviously profit-motivated because if the person can pay extra then they might be able to move up an execution date, or have it arranged for later," she says. "And those who pay more get better treatment." She cites a case where a Chinese patient from Malaysia was allowed to die without anti-rejection medications when his money ran out.

The economics of human organ trafficking are powerful. Patients can live active lives on dialysis thanks to this technology, most don't need a kidney to survive but the inconvenience and discomfort are considerable. Diflo says his patients were "obviously much more troubled by being on dialysis than by getting organs this way."

For patients, the cost of a transplant is far cheaper than a lifetime of dialysis, says Dr. André-Jacques Neusy, head of the dialysis unit at Bellevue and director of the NYU School of Medicine Center for Global Health. Both Bellevue and NYU Medical Center work with Gouverneur hospital in Chinatown.

Bellevue is a public hospital, so it takes all comers. Many of the city's sick immigrants end up here. "We call it the 'Bellevue Express,' because patients head there directly from the airport," remarks Neusy. In addition to being the designated facility for the President and visiting dignitaries, the hospital offers extensive translation services.

Affiliated with the NYU Medical Center, Bellevue is Dr. Diflo's chief source of referral patients who have Chinese prisoners' organs. People who receive a transplant must remain under a doctor's care for an extended period. Thus, patients who buy a kidney from China's death row end up seeking treatment in American hospitals, where the cost can be supported by public funding. Diflo says his patients pay for their anti-rejection drugs with Medicaid and Medicare.

Though no patient would be denied treatment at Bellevue when arriving with an organ of mysterious origin, candidates for domestic transplants must be legal American residents. Even for those eligible candidates the wait for an organ can be extraordinary. There are now more than 75,000 people on waiting lists for organs in the U.S., according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which maintains the national Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network under contract with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Fewer than a third of those people are likely to get their organs this year, the group said in March. Immigrants, both legal and illegal, will sometimes visit home rather than relocate, naturalize, or wait, Neusy says. "We've had patients disappear from the dialysis unit and reappear with a kidney," he notes. He was unaware of any who'd gone specifically for kidneys from executed prisoners in China. "It's disturbing to think we have professional colleagues on the other side that would condone this kind of thing," he says.

Dr. Nathan Thompson, also of Bellevue, concurs. "We have had patients who have gone against our advice and come back with transplants. Where they've gotten them I have no idea," Thompson says.

Another Bellevue physician, Dr. Gerald Villanueva, sent Diflo a Chinese American woman who had appeared at the hospital, implanted with a death row kidney. Suffering from hepatitis, the patient became one of the complicated cases referred to NYU. Only after talking to Diflo did Villanueva realize the source of her transplant. "I guess we've all heard about things like this, but it kind of gets you when, for the first time, you see it," he says. "There are things we read about, but when you see it, it's still surprising. I guess it shouldn't be, huh?"

Diflo says that doctors seeing scores of patients daily simply don't have time to probe more deeply into their patients' histories, especially when language is a barrier. And they're not paid to argue with their charges. "I don't really see that confronting them about the ethics involved will really serve any useful function. In addition, we see them during our office hours, in which we can see as many as 50 patients in three hours not really time for prolonged ethical discussions," he says.

Most doctors interviewed for this article agreed that the majority of those organs aren't coming from China. There's a thriving black market in organs sold by live, willing donors in poorer nations with medical know-how, like India. "I believe that both are morally and ethically reprehensible," Diflo says. "If there are degrees of reprehensibility, however, China wins hands down" because the organs are coming from the executed, who are deprived the right of refusal, for profits. Unlike with desperately poor live donors, that's cash that neither the victims nor their survivors will ever see.

Nearly every country touched by the organ trade has laws barring the business; India and Japan are among those who've enacted them only in the past decade as the tide of the organ trade rose. In the United States, the practice of flying to China for organs becomes a crime if arrangements were made for a fee on American soil. But as with the war on drugs, many experts argue that the only real solution to fighting the organ trade is by addressing the demand. People need organs quickly, through humane means. Doctors interviewed floated several ideas.

The most ready cure is for more people to make provisions that their organs be donated at the time of death. Belgium achieves this by presuming organ donation, requiring that people opt out. The doctors noted that while organ donor cards (like those on drivers' licenses) might help tip the balance in discussions with family, the form isn't a binding agreement. Families can still have the final say. And even with that acceptance, families parents must be willing to say goodbye at times when they might falsely believe there's a shred of hope.

"Brain death is a hard concept to get across. Japan only recently accepted it as a legal definition," explains Dr. Dale Distant of the SUNY Downstate Medical Center. "How does a person take this action when their loved one is warm, his heart's going, a machine is making his lungs go up and down; when for all the world he's just in a coma?" In many corners of the world, including part of Asia, people hold strong, entrenched taboos against violating the body after death.

Dr. Neusy would like to create centers in less medically advanced nations where the needy might be screened and matched with potential donors, usually family members, and then prepared before finally being brought together to the U.S. and other rich nations for the operation. Others promote the free market as a way to meet the demand for organs. One group of supply-siders operates a website and on August 26, 1999, a kidney from a live potential donor was offered up on eBay before site managers closed the bidding down.

On the furthest fringe, some scientists are hoping to master techniques that might allow newborns in future generations to be equipped with a genetic repair kit‹stem cells or other tissue frozen at birth or even later for eventual cloning into needed organs. Enterprises like the longevity company YouthCell have been founded on this premise. Scientists are also trying to perfect transplants from livestock into humans.

But social and technological change takes time. Meanwhile, no one expects Chinese bureaucrats to readily forsake an easy source of income like selling organs from the laogai. "If you have a government more or less imposed on the people, you can do that, so in China it's not a problem," says Distant.

Diflo, for his part, says he came forward not to seek attention for himself but in hopes of kicking off public discussion and scrutiny of the issue. "I don't see myself going on a world speaking tour," he says. "The whole reason I spoke up about this is that I was having a difficult time taking care of these patients because of my own repugnance at what had gone on and how things had happened. It really comes from a more personal place. It comes from my own outrage."

This story first appeared in Village Voice.

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« Reply #17 on: August 08, 2012, 07:25:22 am »

Chinese cosmetics firm using skin from executed prisoners
November 10 2005

A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, an investigation by the Guardian has discovered.
Agents for the firm have told would-be customers it is developing collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments from skin taken from prisoners after they have been shot. The agents say some of the company‘s products have been exported to the UK, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is “traditional“ and nothing to “make such a big fuss about.“

With European regulations to control cosmetic treatments such as collagen not expected for several years, doctors and politicians say the discovery highlights the dangers faced by the increasing number of people seeking to improve their looks. Apart from the ethical concerns, there is also the potential risk of infection.

The House of Commons‘ Select Health Committee is to examine the regulatory system and may launch an investigation and question ministers about the need for immediate new controls.

“I am sure that the committee will want to look at this,“ said Kevin Barron, its Labour chairman. “This is something everyone in society will be very concerned about.“

Plastic surgeons are also concerned about the delay in introducing regulations to control the cosmetic-treatments industry.

It is unclear whether any of the “aesthetic fillers“ such as collagen available in the UK or on the Internet are supplied by the company, which cannot be identified for legal reasons. It is also unclear whether collagen made from prisoners‘ skin is in the research stage or is in production.

However, the Guardian has learned that the company has exported collagen products to the UK in the past.

An agent told customers it had also exported to the US and European countries, and that it was trying to develop fillers using tissue from aborted fetuses.

When formally approached by the Guardian, the agent denied the company was using skin harvested from executed prisoners. However, he had already admitted it was doing precisely this during a number of conversations with a researcher posing as a Hong Kong businessman.

“A lot of the research is still carried out in the traditional manner using skin from the executed prisoner and aborted fetus,“ the agent told the researcher.

This material, he said, was being bought from “biotech“ companies based in Heilongjiang Province and was being developed elsewhere in China.

He suggested that the use of skin and other tissues harvested from executed prisoners was not uncommon.

“In China it is considered very normal and I was very shocked that Western countries can make such a big fuss about this,“ he said.

Speaking from his office in northern China, he added: “The government has put some pressure on all the medical facilities to keep this type of work in low profile.“

The agent said his company exported to the west via Hong Kong.

“We are still in the early days of selling these products, and clients from abroad are quite surprised that China can manufacture the same human collagen for less than 5 percent of what it costs in the West,“ he said.

Skin from prisoners used to be even less expensive, he said. “Nowadays there is a certain fee that has to be paid to the court.”

The agent‘s admission comes after an inquiry into the cosmetic surgery industry in Britain, commissioned by the Department of Health, pointed to the need for new regulations controlling collagen treatments and the use of cadavers for cosmetic treatments.

The Department of Health has agreed to the inquiry‘s recommendations, but is waiting for the European commission to draw up proposals for laws governing cosmetic products. It could be several years before this legislation takes force.

Meanwhile, cosmetic treatments, including those with with aesthetic fillers, are growing rapidly in popularity. Lip enhancement treatments are one of the most popular.

Some fillers are made from cattle or pig tissue, and others from humans. Health officials believe that there may be a risk of transmission of blood-borne viruses and even vCJD from collagen containing human tissue.

While new regulations are to be drawn up, the UK‘s health department is currently powerless to regulate most human-tissue fillers intended for injection or implant, as they occupy a legal grey area. Most products are not governed by regulations controlling medical products, as they are not classified as medicines.

They also escape cosmetics regulations, which only apply to substances used on the surface of the skin and not those injected beneath it. The UK Healthcare Commission is planning new regulations for cosmetic surgery clinics next year, but these will not control the substances used by plastic surgeons.

A number of plastic surgeons have said that they have been hearing rumors about the use of tissue harvested from executed prisoners for several years. Peter Butler, a consultant plastic surgeon and UK government adviser, said there had been rumors that Chinese surgeons had performed hand transplants using hands from executed prisoners. One transplant center was believed to be adjacent to an execution ground.

Human-rights activists in China have repeatedly claimed that organs have been harvested from the corpses of executed prisoners and sold to surgeons offering transplants to fee-paying foreigners. Although the exact number of people facing the death penalty in China is an official secret, Amnesty International believes around 3,400 were executed last year, with a further 6,000 on death row.
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« Reply #18 on: August 08, 2012, 07:25:42 am »

Harvesting Revealed

Epoch Times | November 16, 2006
Jan Jekielek

A Chinese military surgeon had eight Chinese citizens killed to supply a single foreign patient with a new kidney, said former Canadian Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific David Kilgour on November 14. Kilgour spoke as a special guest at the Asian Human Rights Week forum in Warsaw, on day two of a five day program.

"The incredible thing is that the doctor would…go down the names on sheets of paper looking for blood types and tissue types and so on, and he [the patient] would point at names on the list. The doctor would then go away and come back with organs," said Kilgour.

While conducting research in Asia, Kilgour interviewed a now 35 year-old man (name and nationality withheld) who received a kidney transplant at Shanghai No. 1 People's Hospital in 2003. The man said that his surgeon was Dr Tan Jianming, Secretary General of the Chinese Research Society of Dialysis and Transplantation. Dr Tan also holds top posts in a number of Chinese military and civilian hospitals.

The patient suffered from an antibody condition that made it difficult to find a suitable kidney. Over an eight day period, four separate kidneys were brought to him and tested, said Kilgour. When none of those worked, three months later he tried another four – the last of which was a fit. The man was later transferred to No. 85 Hospital of the People's Liberation Army to convalesce.

Dr Tan told the man explicitly that these organs came from executed Chinese prisoners, and that at least some of the organs had been harvested secretly, against the donors' will.

"I am certain that at least some of these were Falun Gong practitioners who never went near a court, who were never convicted of anything," said Kilgour.

Earlier in 2006, Kilgour co-wrote a report detailing evidence of China's large scale state-supported killing of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience – in order to extract their organs to sell for huge profits to people such as this man. Kilgour and co-author human rights lawyer David Matas estimated that over 41,000 organ transplants performed in China could not be accounted for, based on published records.

Kilgour believes, based on many lines of evidence, that apart from death row prisoners, Falun Gong practitioners are particularly targeted for live organ harvesting, as opposed to other groups that the Chinese Communist regime labels as "dissidents" or "enemies of state."

Falun Gong is the peaceful spiritual practice that saw its popularity grow at an astonishing rate in the 1990's. In 1999, then-Chinese dictator Jiang Zemin outlawed the practice in China and ordered its eradication. Multiple human rights organizations have documented the communist regime's brutal, large scale persecution of Falun Gong practitioners since that time.

Since the publication of their report last July, Kilgour and Matas have traveled to over 20 countries searching for support, as well as for new evidence that might either prove or disprove the organ harvesting allegations. Over that time, in addition to the 18 lines of evidence examined in the initial report, Kilgour says they found another ten areas of evidence pointing to the same conclusion. He intends to publish an updated report by the end of the year, and says that it will contain more evidence of the Chinese military's involvement.

"We were hoping that it [the organ harvesting] would have stopped by now, but we are convinced that it is still happening," said Kilgour.
 

Cautiously Optimistic

Yet Kilgour is cautiously optimistic.

The Transplantation Society (TTS), a global body dedicated to the development of transplantation science, education and ethics, issued a statement on the use of organs from Chinese executed prisoners on November 6.

"TTS is opposed to the recovery of organs and tissues from executed prisoners and from any other individual where an autonomous consent for the procurement is lacking," said the statement.

"TTS should express concern that the recovery of organs from executed prisoners [in China] has resulted in rampant commercialism and transplant tourism," it said.

After Kilgour detailed the organ harvesting evidence to the Australian parliament last August, the Australian media took up the cause.

"I have evidence from a senior medical professional in Australia that the number of Australians going for transplant operations in China has [since] collapsed. We are delighted that Australians have stopped," said Kilgour.

On November 15, Chinese state-controlled media reported that Chinese Assistant Health Minister Huang Jiefu called for "an information network that registers and keeps track of every human organ donation."

"That's either a step in the right direction, or it's a smoke screen," said Kilgour, in response to news of the official statement.

Kilgour's revelations were part of series of seminars examining the state of human rights in Asia being held November 13-17, 2006 in Warsaw, Poland. Warsaw's Asian Human Rights Week is focused on human rights in Burma, Cambodia, North Korea, Vietnam, China, Tibet and Bhutan.

The forum was organized by the Oriental Culture Center, an organization dedicated to the promotion of Asian culture in Poland, and Collegium Civitas, a top Polish private university specializing in the humanities. It was under the patronage of Polish Minister of Culture and Heritage, as well as the Mayor of Warsaw.

While in Warsaw, Kilgour also presented his report to Marek Jurek, the elected leader of the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish Parliament.

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« Reply #19 on: August 08, 2012, 07:26:17 am »

Baby Parts for Sale
A batch of eyes by UPS – 30 livers by FedEx

By J. C. Willke, MD
After fighting abortion for 30 years I thought I had seen and heard it all, but not so. Here is a new development, a coordinated high-tech industry functioning for the specific purpose of obtaining and selling high-quality fetal organs for research.

Partial-Birth abortions seemed to be so horrible that most of us wondered how such procedures could be defended. Many of us chalked it up to the fact that the pro-abortion advocates and the abortion industry didn't want to give one inch for fear that their whole house of cards will fold. I, among others, felt that their resistance to forbidding this gruesome procedure was a fear of a domino effect. If we stopped this one, then we'd stop the next and the next and the next and they didn't want it to start. But now we have evidence of a very clear additional reason why they want these late-term abortions to continue. The reason is that this is the one method that gives them intact fetal bodies from which they can obtain organs for research.

The other method of late-term abortion, D&E (Dilatation and Evacuation), involves reaching up into the uterus and dismembering the live baby. This delivers pieces of macerated organs that are usually unsuitable for fetal research, transplantation etc. This may be the main reason for their vehement defense of the practice of Partial-Birth abortion.

The story was broken recently by Life Dynamics under the guidance of its director, Mark Crutcher. A lady came to him with a story, which he has verified. The name of the informant cannot be revealed, as she is still involved in the work that she has exposed. Her story is dramatically recorded in a video just released by Life Dynamics. In it, this woman under the pseudonym, Kelly, tells her story. Her back is to the camera and her voice is electronically altered to prevent her identification. She worked for “an outside source, hired with a team to go in [to late term abortion clinics] to dissect and procure fetal tissue for high-quality sales.” Read on as Kelly describes her macabre profession. “What we did was to have a contract with an abortion clinic that would allow us to go there on certain days. We would get a generated list each day to tell us what tissue researchers, pharmaceutical companies and universities were looking for. Then we would examine the patient charts. We would screen out the ones we didn't want.

We did not use specimens that had STDs [sexually transmitted diseases] or fetal abnormalities. We only wanted the most perfect specimens that we could give to the researchers.” And the age of these babies? The victims were up to and over 30-weeks gestation. “We were looking for eyes, livers, brains, thymuses [lymphoid tissue], cardiac blood, cord blood, blood from the liver, even blood from the limbs.”

Only an estimated 2% of the late-term aborted babies had abnormalities. “The rest were very healthy. 95% of the time, she was just there to get rid of the baby.” How many of the late-term – the ones around 30 weeks – would you see? “Probably 30 or 40 babies a week.”

Kelly stated, “We would sell the tissue to private contractors. They in turn would sell to other universities and researchers. There was a high demand every week to buy such fetal tissues. It was shipped by UPS, FedEx, Airborne and sometimes by special couriers. Sometimes we would take the specimen in a box to the airport and put it on as regular cargo, to be picked up at the destination.” And did these shipping companies know they were transporting baby parts? “No. All they knew was that it was just human cells. But it could be a completely intact fetus. It might be a batch of eyes, or 30 or 40 livers going out that day, or thymuses

And the leftover parts? “We would usually put this down the garbage disposal along with the placenta and the leftover blood material. If it was too large to go down the drain, they had a special freezer and when they accumulated 60 or 70 fetuses in one box, it would be picked up for incineration.”

And then the obvious question. Kelly is still working for this company, so why did she come and tell this story to a pro-life group? One day when she was working, “A set of twins at 24 weeks gestation was brought to us in a pan. They were both alive. The doctor came back and said, `Got you some good specimens, twins.' I looked at him and said, `There's something wrong here. They are moving. I don't do this. This is not in my contract.' I told him I would not be part of taking their lives. So he took a bottle of sterile water and poured it in the pan until the fluid came up over their mouths and noses, letting them drown. I left the room because I could not watch this.” But she did go back and dissect them after they were dead. She said, “That's when I decided it was wrong. I did not want to be there when that happened.” And then it happened again and again. “At 16 weeks, all the way up to sometimes even 30 weeks, and we had live births come back to us.” And then? “Then the doctor would either break the neck or take a pair of tongs and beat the fetus until it was dead.”

Did the abortionist ever alter the procedures to get you the type of specimens you needed that day? Her answer was “Yes, before the procedures they would want to see the list of what we wanted to procure. The [abortionist] would get us the most complete, intact specimens that he could. They would be delivered to us completely intact. Sometimes the fetus appeared to be dead, but when we opened up the chest cavity, the heart was still beating.” She was asked if the type of abortion procedure was intentionally altered to deliver to you an intact specimen, even if that meant giving you a live baby? Her answer was, “Yes, that was so we could sell better tissue, so that our company would make more money. At the end of the year, they would give the clinic back more money because we got good specimens.”

The Partial-Birth abortion procedure involves inserting seaweed laminaria into the cervix. This swells up, dilating the cervix. In 24 hours, new laminaria are inserted. This produces more swelling and dilatation so that by the third day the baby can be extracted. During the dilatation procedure she is sent to a nearby motel. Sometimes the laminaria would fall out and she would go into labor and deliver the baby. And then? “They would call the nurse, and the nurse would call the doctor who would go to the motel room and pick up the woman and the fetus. That's when they would call us and say, `Okay, we've got a couple of specimens here,' or `We've got one specimen.' We would go [to the clinic] and the specimen [the baby] would be in a bucket, sometimes alive. When we opened the chest cavity the heart would still be beating. Sometimes we could see movement in the bucket. These babies had to come out alive. There's no way for them to be coming out dead. They were all alive. How they killed them is anyone's guess. My guess is that they had to kill them in

the bucket or put them in a corner and let them die slowly.” And that was because the abortionist had seen how strongly you reacted to seeing them killed in front of you? “That's correct. And he did not want to repeat those instances but they kept happening anyway, and that's how I came to call you guys [life Dynamics].”

Finally, Kelly related how sometimes a woman, halfway through the dilatation procedure, would change her mind and say she did not want the abortion. In such a case they would tell her that it's too late now. “You're going to have the abortion.” Kelly said, “All of the staff would gather around pressuring her to have the abortion. On the second day, they're given an IV sedation, which kind of puts them into what I call a Nyquil nap. They're just basically drowsy, not thinking for themselves and that's basically how they are coerced into continuing the procedure.”

Finally, in the interview, she notes that many of the employees of the clinics were lesbians. When the mother was unconscious these women would discuss her genitalia with degrading remarks and on occasion even take the phone number off of her chart. Then they would “call her weeks down the road and ask her out for a date. It was not uncommon for women or men at the clinic to hit on these women for dates.”

Now We Know Why
Now we know one of the major reasons why the abortion industry is fighting so intensely to prevent a ban on Partial-Birth abortion from being enacted. It's more than not giving any ground on abortion for any reason. It's also because selling fetal parts is a very lucrative part of the abortion business. These mothers pay large sums of money for late-term abortions and the abortionists in turn are given big money for these intact organs. The model specimens have to be: the bigger - the better; the older - the better; the more alive - the better.

The above dialogue is from a video that has been produced by Life Dynamics. If any of our readers would like a free copy of this interview, while quantities last, feel free to contact us and we will send you a copy. Send your request to: Life Issues Institute, 1721 W. Galbraith Rd, Cincinnati, OH 45239. Phone (513) 729-3600. Fax (513) 729-3636. E-mail lifeissues@aol.com

Human Life Amendment – Realistic or Not?

Is the goal of a federal Human Life Amendment still a realistic expectation of the pro-life movement, or are we to listen to the media, which has consistently stated that all hope is lost? We're being told that the pro-life movement has abandoned the goal of a Human Life Amendment, while being praised by the media for re-evaluating and taking a more realistic stand in terms of our expectations. Paul Weyrich, a leading pro-life conservative, has given up. Others have joined the chorus of those who are pessimistic.

Much is being said of how Republican candidates for president are no longer backing an amendment to ban abortions. If you read the fine print they are not denying their theoretical support for it, but they are saying that it's hopeless, it's not capable of being achieved and that we should content ourselves with lesser steps along the way.

Leslie Stahl, in May on 60 Minutes, sounded the party line of the liberals. She said, “A funny thing is happening these days to the Christian right, and it sounds like a defeat... Twenty years and many political victories later, abortion is still legal, school prayer is still banned, there's more tolerance of sexuality, and even the dreaded National Endowment for the Arts, attacked as purveyor of pornography, has survived.”

Sadly, the two major Democrat candidates for president are solidly pro-abortion and oppose a Human Life Amendment. Still, of all the Republican candidates, only one, Lamar Alexander, has specifically stated that he doesn't support a Human Life Amendment. Bush, Dole and McCain speak of support but push it off into the unforeseeable future. Forbes, Quayle and Kasich would support one with a ****-incest amendment. Only Bauer, Smith and Keyes would hold out for a comprehensive federal amendment with only a life of the mother exception.

To gain a good perspective, let's review a bit of history. The decisions to legalize abortion were in January 1973. Immediately after that, the fledgling pro-life movement brought together attorneys, physicians and others who asked themselves the question, what are we to do? At that stage the judgment was that the court would not reverse itself for perhaps another half-century. The only answer then was an amendment to the Constitution. This was critically studied and debated over the next year. The pro-life movement finally settled on two sets of wording. One did not have an exception for the life of the mother. The other had the wording, “to prevent the death of the mother.” That was the stated specific goal of the movement in 1974.

The rubber met the road when Reagan was elected and it was presumed that there were pro-life majorities in the House and Senate. The Senate Judiciary Committee held extensive hearings on versions of a Human Life Amendment. One was a sweeping federal amendment. The other simply reversed Roe vs. Wade (Hatch Amendment) and returned the judgment to the states. The third was the original “Paramount” without a life of the mother exception. After extensive hearings, when the Hatch Amendment finally came to a vote, it failed. The others were not voted on.

Through the 80's it was evident that the pro-life movement did not have enough strength in the Congress to vote out a federal Human Life Amendment, but we were gaining strength on the US Supreme Court. Optimism ran high as Supreme Court Justices were slowly replaced. It peaked with the Casey decision and plummeted when this not only failed to reverse Roe, but also in certain ways reinforced it. It did, of course, allow gradual restrictions, and that part of it was a victory.

Through the 90's, these restrictions have multiplied throughout the states and continue to be attempted at the federal level. These include parental notification and consent, informed consent, waiting periods, clinic regulations and others. The one achievement at the federal level, slowly accomplished during the 80's and largely maintained in the 90's, was the banning of federal funding for abortion.

Attention must be drawn to Bob Dole's rejection of the Republican Party plank in 1996, which called for such an amendment. Many believe his comment that he hadn't read it cost him the election. Minimally, it cost him the votes of millions of crossover Democrats whose major motivation for voting for a Republican president was the abortion issue. When Dole caustically stated that that was not on his agenda, these folks saw no reason to vote other than Democrat and went ahead and elected Clinton.

At first glance, in the presidential election of 2000, we have a near triumph when we consider the Republican candidates. Remember the 3 W's during last presidential election – Wilson, Weld and Whitman? They were strongly pro-abortion Republicans and got nowhere. This time we have no pro-abortion Republicans like them. Even Lamar Alexander, the only one who does not support a Human Life Amendment, nevertheless has spoken in support of literally every one of the steps along the way.

Clearly, if there is a choice of candidates at this time who are truly contenders, the public media has chosen George W. Bush. Let's look at his actual words and those of Elizabeth Dole, the other top Republican contender.

Elizabeth Dole says she supports a constitutional amendment banning abortion, but apparently not enough to do anything about it. In late April, she told reporters that the debate over such an amendment was “divisive and irrelevant...the amendment is not going to pass...rather than engage in dead-end debate, let's move forward to get some positive things done for this country.”

The decisions are not all in on George W. Bush. He has certainly worked hard in this session of the Texas legislature for pro-life legislation, particularly parental notification. He has also appointed a solid, dynamic pro-life physician, Reyn Archer, to head the Texas Department of Health. But some of his actions have also gone the other way. As for a Human Life Amendment, he's not quite as pessimistic as Elizabeth Dole above, but nevertheless sounds the same note. When nailed down on the amendment, he was asked, “Does this mean if it were up to you, that all abortions would be constitutionally banned?” “Yes” he said, “except for the life of the mother, **** or incest.” That being said, there are many voices who question how vigorously he would push for this, and, far more important, what his appointments would be like.

It is quite clear that the secular media is trying everything possible to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, i.e., that the pro-life movement has abandoned an amendment as impossible. They have also found a few pro-life voices to agree to such a prognosis. Quite to the contrary, however, there is little evidence to confirm this wish of the pro-abortion media. Rather, as we look at the movement, we see two commonalties: 1) Most now agree that we will not get a Human Life Amendment in the next few years. 2) Such an amendment, however, has not been abandoned or rejected but remains the very heart of the ultimate goal of the pro-life movement.

For some, perhaps at this time it remains only a symbol. But even if only that, it is of crucial importance. The Republican platform comes to mind immediately. It would be devastating to the pro-life movement if the Republicans change it and indicate that they will ultimately settle for something less. It would cut the very heart out of the efforts of millions of people who have stood solidly behind this as an ultimate goal. For people who in their hearts are totally convinced that abortion is the killing of an innocent child and that abortion must be stopped, this is an absolute. They will ultimately settle for nothing less.

There is of course another option, and that is a total reversal by the Supreme Court. With the prospect of the possible election of a president in 2000 who will be supportive, this president could replace several Supreme Court Justices. But assuming the Court even reverses Roe, that only returns the situation to status quo ante. That would simply allow the many states, which now have pro-abortion laws, to continue the slaughter. It is possible that the Supreme Court could not merely reverse Roe, but move beyond. It could some day interpret the Constitution as protecting the unborn. In such case, the Supreme Court could do the same job that an amendment would be designed to accomplish. However, this remains but a dream at this time.

Realistically, pro-lifers acquainted with the mood of this country would share a judgment that a constitutional amendment is extremely difficult to obtain. In all pragmatism, one has to understand that it will not happen until a strong, super majority of people in this country support it. Happily, we are slowly moving in that direction and against all odds. However, we are certainly not there yet. The road ahead is very long, but that does not mean that we should take our eyes off our ultimate goal. To those candidates who say that we do not have a chance for an amendment this year, we must ask the following question. “Yes, we understand that, but do you agree that the ultimate goal of this movement is to protect all babies' lives from conception, while at the same time providing generously whatever help these mothers need in that troubled time of their life?”

This is the position of the vast majority of people in the pro-life movement. It should be the policy of the candidates we support.

LIFE ISSUES TODAY
with Dr. J. C. Willke

Stem Cell Research Backed and Opposed in Polls
Gannett News gave wide publicity to a poll done by the Patient Coalition for Urgent Research. In May, it surveyed 1000 adults by telephone. Those polled were first given a definition of a stem cell. Then they were told these cells could be grown from 1) “excess human embryos” or 2) “fetal tissue donated to research.” Following this was a long list of possible beneficial uses for such cells. In response to this, 69% either strongly or somewhat favored research using stem cells, while 26% were somewhat or strongly opposed.

Now let's look at a second poll also done recently. It was by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. The wording of this question was different from the wording above. This poll asked whether people opposed or supported research “in which live human embryos would be destroyed or discarded.” In this poll 74% opposed such use of stem cells.

As we have said time and time again, when judging the results of polls, do not look at the results reported. Rather, first examine the wording of the questions, then decide whether the poll results have legitimacy. Clearly, both polls asked for essentially the same information. The wording of the questions was different. The bishop's poll was more realistic and accurate, and it brought a totally different answer.

Also in May, a presidential advisory commission judged that it was ethical for the government to pay for such controversial research, “as long as the embryos are not created solely for research purposes.” This defies logic. These either are or are not living human embryos. Their lives are either respected or they are directly killed in this procedure. Why does it make a difference whether they were created for this specific purpose or whether they were created for some other purpose before they were killed? The point is they are being killed, and the pro-life movement objects to killing innocent human embryos.

It is recalled that a major justification for Nazi doctors experimenting on humans sounded strangely similar. It went like this. “Well, these Jews (or Gypsies etc.) are going to be killed anyway, so we might as well make use of these human bodies rather than let them go to waste.” And so, certain Nazi doctors collected brains, made lampshades out of skin and did many experiments on their victims, both before as well as after killing them. This was all in the name of what they called science. After all, the end result was to be the betterment of mankind.

The Nuremberg trials considered these arguments put forth as justification for what the Nazi doctors did. The judges totally rejected such, and some of the doctors who did these experiments were hanged. Enough said.

Since everything today coming out of Washington seems to be predicated on the most recent poll on the subject, it's good to look at wordings of other questions, to emphasize the fact that we should not accept, out of hand, the headline trumpeting the results of a specific poll. As our readers know, the wording of the question leads the answer. But, let's look at the results of a few polling questions to reemphasize this fact.

Apropos the question above on stem cells, let's look at another example of two questions asked of the same people in the same poll. Here are the questions.

In general do you think a woman should have the right to choose to have an abortion? Yes – 67% No – 29%

In general do you think the lives of unborn babies should be protected? Yes – 79% No – 19%

Clearly, this was the same question, but worded differently. The difference in wording completely reversed the answers. It might be noted that 37% of the respondents said yes to both questions.

Let's look at another poll, again asked of the same people in the same poll.

Would you favor or oppose a constitutional amendment which would guarantee a woman's right to have an abortion? Favor – 53% Oppose – 41% Don't Know – 6%

Now let's go down and ask the second one.

Would you favor or oppose a constitutional amendment which would guarantee a woman's right to make a choice to have an abortion? Favor – 63% Oppose – 32% Don't Know – 3%

Notice the very slight difference in wording. The second question used the identical wording, except that it added “to make a choice” to the wording. But this addition added 10% to the approval and subtracted 9% from disapproval.

So let's repeat. Never swallow what the headline reports or the network tells you. First examine the wording of the question. Only then render your judgment.

STATES EXCHANGE

Effective Tools to Counter Partial-Birth Abortion
Have you found yourself looking for effective visual tools to help educate others about Partial-Birth abortion? If so, you will be pleased to know that some effective new tools exist.

Heather's Place, a pro-life educational entity, was started by Dr. Tony Levatino and his wife Ceil. Dr. Levatino used to perform abortions, but is now a pro-life physician. They commissioned five very detailed and lifelike illustrations depicting the Partial-Birth abortion procedure. These color pictures are available on a 14” x 20” laminated flip chart. It includes an instructional book describing the procedure as well as a corresponding set of slides. The chart is designed for small discussion groups, while the slide set is effective for larger audiences. The cost is $49.95 plus $6.95 for shipping and handling.

Pro-life congressmen Henry Hyde and Charles Canady have used the chart on the House floor during debate. Senator Rick Santorum has used it on the Senate floor. Several State Attorney Generals have used the pictures in court.

In addition, 8 _” x 3 _” color leaflets are available that depict the illustrations and a brief description of each. There is also a black-and white-postcard showing the pictured illustration – great for educating elected officials and others.

The best quantity price for either the leaflet or postcard is 20 cents each plus shipping, depending upon the number ordered. 100% of the proceeds from these educational materials goes to Crisis Pregnancy Centers by way of annual grants. For more information contact: Heather's Place, 67 Capitol Place, Rensselaer, NY 12144. Phone (518) 449-4828. Email: levatino@nycap.rr.com

“Campaign Reform” Suppresses Free Speech
It seems increasingly obvious that the so-called “campaign reform” bills before the US Congress are squarely aimed at cutting the pro-life movement off at the knees. The Shays-Meehan bill (HR419) will effectively suppress most of the activities of the pro-life movement that have made it an influence in the United States.

To understand the basic mechanism of the damage that will be done by this bill, we must understand the difference between issue advocacy and express advocacy. Issue advocacy is commonly known as lobbying. The pro-life movement is a perfect example of issue advocacy. Our issue is the ultimate protection of the unborn child. Anything that we do in speech or in print that promotes this ultimate goal is issue advocacy. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and hence guarantees every citizen the right to discuss such issues.

Express Advocacy has been clearly defined on many occasions by the US Supreme Court in cases such as: FEC v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life 1986 and Buckley v. Valeo 1976. The Court has stated that it extends only to communications “containing express words of advocacy of election or defeat, such as....vote for, elect, support, cast your ballot for, Smith for Congress, Vote Against, defeat, reject.” The Supreme Court calls express advocacy a “bright line.” It has stated that it cannot be removed or changed by an act of congress, because it is basically rooted in the First Amendment itself.

Let's take two candidates. One favors a ban on Partial-Birth abortion, the other opposes. If a particular pro-life group publicizes the fact that the one candidate opposes such a ban, this can influence some people's votes for or against this candidate. The Federal Election Commission's argument has been that such an effort would be express advocacy. The Supreme Court, however, has repeatedly struck this kind of reasoning down, ruling that such candidate-specific issue advocacy enjoys the highest degree of First Amendment protection. The court has specifically rejected the idea that such a communication should be evaluated on a third party's judgment regarding the motivation or intent of the communication, or on the basis of somebody's judgment about how the message was understood by some who receive it. Nevertheless, such reasoning permeates the Shays-Meehan bill.

Using such subjective judgment, relating to the “intent” of some communication, this bill would generally prohibit pro-life groups from paying for communications to the public at any time of the year when a federal regulator might judge it to be “for the purpose of influencing a federal election.”

A pro-life group typically will publish, prior to an election in its newsletter, the results of candidate surveys. These typically involve a listing of candidates, their voting records and a series of questions which candidates answer. Such newsletters are not considered by the Supreme Court to be express advocacy. Shays-Meehan, if adopted and enforced, would completely wipe out a pro-life group's ability to publish such records of political candidates.

The Supreme Court has said, “So long as persons and groups avoid expenditures that in express terms advocate the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate, they are free to spend as much as they want to promote the candidate and his views.” Under Shays-Meehan, however, they are not free to do this. In fact, a typical pro-life group may not pay for an ad that even mentions the candidate's name on the radio or TV for sixty days before a primary or a general election.

But for sixty days? Actually, it extends through any time of the year. Such a publication dealing with voting records or positions of candidates would be an illegal corporate campaign expenditure at any time of the year, unless a complex of interlocking conditions would be met – conditions simply impossible for the overwhelming majority of pro-life groups to meet.

Political Action Committees would still be allowed some latitude, but the Supreme Court has enumerated at length the very substantial limitations and burdens that apply to raising and spending political action committee funds under the Federal Election Campaign Act. PAC restrictions on fundraising and expenditures would be tightened still further. The effect on PAC's would sharply reduce any type of commentary by them on candidates. Issue Advocacy, e.g. campaigning for a Partial-Birth abortion ban, would be literally impossible under Shays-Meehan, even if no candidate's name would be mentioned. The reason is the bill says that “anything of value, provided by a person...for the purpose of influencing a federal election...is express advocacy.” Therefore, merely taking out an ad discussing partial-birth abortion could be construed by the pro-abortion candidate to be of value to the pro-life candidate and hence a violation of federal law.

Shays-Meehan sharply forbids “coordination with a candidate.” If a pro-life group called a senatorial candidate within sixty days of election to ask him when his birthday was, that would be a violation of federal law, because it would be communication with the candidate and that is forbidden by Shays-Meehan.

A section of this bill would also force Right to Life groups to forfeit their right to freely associate with legitimate providers of services if the candidate also was using the provider. This would include: professional services, polling, media advice, fundraising, campaign research, direct mail, etc., even though there was no connection between the candidate's use and the pro-life group's use of such a provider.

Summary
Shays-Meehan would obliterate the distinction between issue advocacy and express advocacy. It would effectively nullify the rights of pro-life groups to communicate to the public any information about candidates' activities, statements and votes. The people who are still allowed to publicize such actions would be political parties and candidates, the sharply limited and regulated PAC's and all of the liberal media. It wouldn't just handicap the pro-life movement. It would go a long way toward completely destroying any influence that our groups have in the public arena. Clearly, the pro-life movement is squarely in its crosshairs.

From the Executive Director Bradley Mattes

The Cost of an Abortion
Many of us have seen the bumper sticker that reads, “What does an abortion cost? One human life.” True words indeed because each abortion stops the beating heart of an innocent unborn baby. Since 1973 the carnage has reached nearly 40 million babies who have died on the altar of “choice.”

Tens of thousands of pro-lifers and millions of people involved with an abortion decision are painfully aware that the cost is considerably higher. Abortion's wake of destruction is wide and long. Like a vicious tornado, it shows no mercy, destroying everything and everyone in its path. In reality, the price paid for abortion is far more than one life.

The obvious second victim of abortion is the mother of the unborn child. There may be immediate repercussions resulting in physical complications like a torn cervix, perforated uterus or severe infection. Longer-term ramifications include ectopic pregnancies, breast cancer, sterility or even death.

Then there are the psychological effects that can be worse than the physical. Some of them include: guilt, shame, nightmares, insomnia, flashbacks and anniversary reactions. She may be unable to tolerate the presence of babies, or she may kindle a hatred for men. She may suffer from sexual dysfunction and even consider or act on a suicidal impulse.

Yes, women pay a high price for the so-called liberation of abortion. Ironically, she isn't liberated at all but is often bound by the heavy chains of physical and mental torment, which greatly diminishes her quality of life.

The father of the unborn child is another casualty of abortion. He is at a greater disadvantage of dealing with the psychological aftermath than the mother because modern society, at best, barely acknowledges his role of fatherhood in an unexpected pregnancy. Further, he is often taught from a very young age that it is less than manly to show emotional weakness or cry. Instead he is encouraged to bottle-up his feelings while his partner exercises her celebrated, exclusive freedom to kill their unborn baby. The destructive emotions mount with no constructive way to relieve the pressure.

Men often heap torment on their psyches as a result of helplessly watching their children die while having absolutely no legal recourse. Or, if he is forcing abortion on his partner, the guilt may be overwhelming. Anger, alcohol and drug addiction, panic attacks, poor coping skills and self-imposed isolation are prevalent symptoms. This post-abortion anguish has destroyed many loving relationships, careers and friendships.

Grandparents, aunts and uncles of the unborn child add to the growing list of those who pay a price for abortion. They are perhaps the silent mourners who have little or no standing in the abortion decision, but can be greatly affected nonetheless. Their hearts ache for the hugs, kisses and smiles that will never be. Their call to fill the role of a family member who offers assistance, advice and love throughout this child's life will go unanswered. The silence can be emotionally deafening.

Siblings sometimes pay a dear price for their parents' abortion decision. If a child becomes aware that her brother or sister has been gotten rid of, she may come to see her mother as an avenue of death instead of a nurturing, life-affirming parent, and fear her. Real-life examples have demonstrated that children as young as two suffer as a result of the abortion of a sibling. Some of the anxieties she may suffer from include irrational fears, guilt, self-hate, anger, hostility toward the parents, or withdrawal. The abortion experience may skew the child's view of her parents as role models, adversely affecting her parenting abilities later in life.

There may also be a far-reaching, hidden cost of abortion in the future of these families. Survivors of abortion are taught from youth that their brother or sister is expendable if the time isn't right for a larger family. The parents may gently convey to their child that Mommy's and Daddy's jobs simply won't permit the added time needed to invest in another child. Or Mother may tell her little one that she wants to save all of her love for the family she has now. Whatever the excuse, the chilling truth will be conveyed to the child.

Let's jump to the future. Now these children have families of their own. Mom and Dad have become elderly parents, increasingly dependent upon their children. Euthanasia may be a logical decision for adults who have grown up with a disposable-life mentality. Baby boomers may be a prime target for this deadly philosophy that they helped to create. The adult child may gently convey to her parents that she and her husband's jobs simply won't permit the added time needed to invest in caring for physically demanding parents. She may tell the aging couple that she needs to save all of her love for her young, demanding family. The chilling truth will be conveyed and the circle of abortion will be complete.

Yes, the cost of abortion is higher than any price tag we can imagine. Thankfully, there is a compassionate grass roots pro-life movement to assist those who struggle with an abor-tion decision. We certainly have our work cut out for us.

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« Reply #20 on: August 08, 2012, 07:26:35 am »

Harvesting organs from dead bodies considered immoral, although it is essential
 
25.03.2009 Source: Pravda.Ru URL: http://english.pravda.ru/science/health/107297-organs_transplantation-0

Organ transplant operations remain a very important problem for Russia to deal with. The problem is not only about medical complications of such operations. It is also about the attitude of the general public to the issue. Europe has a number of special programs, the goal of which is to explain the importance of donor organ transplant operations. The now-deceased Pope John Paul II approved and blessed transplantology as a perspective branch of modern medicine.

The problem of child organ donation is one of the most important problems of transplantology in present-day Russia. Russian laws do not allow the transplantation of human organs from one child to another. Russia’s Ministry for Healthcare and Social Development prepared a document to legalize the posthumous donation for children. The document is titled “Instructions to Pronounce Child’s Death on the Base of the Brain Death Diagnosis.”

The system of postmortem donorship will become effective only when the society is prepared to accept it. In Russia, many people believe that harvesting human organs is a criminal business.

The idea to replace defunct human organs with new ones like spare parts appeared a long time ago. Successful transplant surgeries became possible only during the 20th century, when scientists learned to suppress recipient’s immune system to prevent the rejection of an alien organ. The human body rejects the transplanted organ if the latter was not taken from a genetically identical organism.

Scientists discovered the mechanisms of immune reactions and learned to suppress them to let a donor organ take roots in a new body. Nevertheless, the coercive suppression of the immune system remains one of the most serious problems of modern transplantology. A patient remains vulnerable to infections after surgery. In addition, the steroids that are used to suppress the functions of the human immune system, produce a whole bouquet of side effects.

Modern medicine has mastered the transplantation of skin, kidneys, liver, heart, intestines, lungs, pancreatic gland, bones, joints, veins, heart valves and cornea. The first-ever successful operation to transplant a human hand took place in 1998. One of the most ground-breaking recent achievements in transplantology was made in France in 2005, when surgeons made a face transplant operation to a female patient. Chinese surgeons succeeded in the transplantation of the **** in 2006. The United States is the world’s leader in transplantology. US surgeons make 52 kidney, 19 liver and 8 heart transplant operations per a million of citizens.

The shortage of human organs is the major non-medical problem of transplantology. Thousands of people die as they wait for donor organs at hospitals. Scientists search for alternative sources of donor organs. The transplantation of animal organs to humans seems to be quite possible in theory, although the goal is very hard to achieve because a human being differs from animals greatly genetically. The only exception is the transplantation of heart valves from pigs to humans. It could be also possible to culture organs, or grow them outside the body in a nutrient solution, although it is a matter of the future.

The practical use of alternative sources of internal organs is still a matter of science fiction novels. Donors (dead or alive) are the major sources of organs for transplantation nowadays.

In accordance with Russian laws, a living donor is supposed to be a direct relative of a patient. This restriction is not necessary at all: any stranger can be a biologically compatible donor to an ailing person. For example, more than a half of Jesus Christians religious group members donated their kidneys to those who were desperately waiting for donor kidneys.

The trafficking of human organs is strictly forbidden in Russia, like in all other countries, save for Iran. The USA currently discusses the opportunity to legalize the market of organs. If only 0.06 percent of the US adult population sell one kidney of the pair, the quantity of donor kidneys will be enough for everyone who needs the organs for transplantation.

Needless to say that the legalization of the organ trafficking will lead to serious problems. Those people, who do not have access to high-quality medicine, may provide infected organs. There was an incident in 2007, when a recipient was infected with HIV and hepatitis C through a donor organ.

There are organs, which a living donor cannot donate – the heart, for example. Dead people make the second source of donor organs in transplantology today. Organs stay alive during a certain amount of time after death. Posthumous donorship is also connected with a number of serious problems – the legal definition of death and the need to receive relatives’ agreement to harvest organs.

It may seem immoral to harvest organs from a dead person without the agreement from his or her relatives. However, why would relatives need the internal organs of their deceased loved ones? The time, which is required to receive a written agreement from relatives of a deceased individual, may lead to tragedies. Some countries (Poland, Brazil, Spain, Italy, Russia and others) practice the implied consent as far and the harvesting of organs from a dead body is concerned.

The implied consent practice has recently been banned in Ukraine. The decision has virtually put an end to the harvesting of organs from dead bodies – relatives do not give their consent to that.

Over 80,000 people are waiting for organ transplant surgeries in the world at this very moment. The list grows every 13 minutes. Waiting kills 17 transplant patients every day.

The definition of brain death remains unclear still. Specialists say that the human brain dies about ten minutes after the cessation of blood circulation in it. It is worthy of note than any type of cardiac arrest was considered deadly a hundred years ago. However, there were incidents, when people stayed alive for a much longer time than ten minutes.
 
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« Reply #21 on: August 08, 2012, 07:26:57 am »

China admits to organ harvesting

China is trying to move away from the use of executed prisoners as the major source of organs for transplants.

According to the China Daily newspaper, executed prisoners currently provide two-thirds of all transplant organs.

The government is now launching a voluntary donation scheme, which it hopes will also curb the illegal trafficking in organs.

But analysts say cultural bias against removing organs after death will make a voluntary scheme hard to implement.

Thriving black market

About 1.5 million people in China need transplants, but only about 10,000 operations are performed annually, according to the health ministry.

The scarcity of available organs has led to a thriving black market in trafficked organs, and in an effort to stop this the government passed a law in 2007 banning trafficking as well as the donation of organs to unrelated recipients.

But in practice, illegal transplants - some from living donors - are still frequently reported by the media and the Ministry of Health.

Human rights groups have often criticised China for its lack of transparency over organ donation, but critics have focused particular concern on the use of body parts from executed prisoners.

In a rare admission of the extent to which this takes place, China Daily - citing unnamed experts - said on Wednesday that more than 65% of organ donations come from death row prisoners.

China executes more people than any other country. Amnesty International said at least 1,718 people were given the death penalty in 2008.

The China Daily quoted Vice-Health Minister Huang Jiefu as saying that condemned prisoners were "definitely not a proper source for organ transplants".

The new scheme is therefore designed to reduce the reliance on death row inmates, as well as regulating the industry by combating the illegal trafficking of organs.

The system will be piloted in 10 provinces and cities, and a fund will be started to provide financial aid to donors' families.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8222732.stm
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« Reply #22 on: August 08, 2012, 07:29:56 am »

China's Gruesome Organ Harvests organs from Falun Gong + other prisoners



Bangkok

The jeepney driver sizes us up the minute we climb in. My research assistant is a healthy, young Israeli dude, so I must be the one with the money. He addresses his broken English to me: "Girl?"

No. No girls. Take us to the .  .  .

"Ladyboy? Kickboxer?"

No. No ladyboy, no kickboxer, thanks. I may be a paunchy, sweaty, middle-aged white guy, but I'm here to--well, actually, I am on my way to meet a Chinese woman in a back alley. She is going to tell me intimate stories of humiliation, torture, and abuse. And the truly shameful part is that after 50 or so interviews with refugees from Chinese labor camps, I won't even be listening that closely. I'm in Bangkok because practitioners of Falun Gong, the Buddhist revival movement outlawed by Beijing, tend to head south when they escape from China. Those without passports make their way through Burma on motorcycles and back roads. Some have been questioned by U.N. case workers, but few have been interviewed by the press, even though, emerging from Chinese labor camps, they are eager, even desperate, to tell their stories. With the back-alley Chinese woman, I intend to direct my questions away from what she'll want to talk about--persecution and spirituality--to something she will barely remember, a seemingly innocuous part of her experience: a needle jab, some poking around the abdomen, an X-ray, a urine sample--medical tests consistent with assessment of prisoners for organ harvesting.

My line of inquiry began in a Montreal community center over

a year ago, listening to a heavy-set middle-aged Chinese man named Wang Xiaohua, a soft-spoken ordinary guy except for the purple discoloration that extends down his forehead.

He recalled a scene: About 20 male Falun Gong practitioners were standing before the empty winter fields, flanked by two armed escorts. Instead of leading them out to dig up rocks and spread fertilizer, the police had rounded them up for some sort of excursion. It almost felt like a holiday. Wang had never seen most of the prisoners' faces before. Here in Yunnan Forced Labor Camp No. 2, Falun Gong detainees were carefully kept to a minority in each cell so that the hardened criminals could work them over.



Practitioners of Falun Gong were forbidden to communicate openly. Yet as the guards motioned for them to begin walking, Wang felt the group fall into step like a gentle migrating herd. He looked down at the red earth, streaked with straw and human waste, to the barren mountains on the horizon. Whatever lay ahead, Wang knew they were not afraid.



After 20 minutes, he saw a large gleaming structure in the distance--maybe it was a hospital, Wang thought. The summer of 2001 had been brutal in South China. After he'd worked for months in the burning sun, Wang's shaved head had become deeply infected. Perhaps it was getting a little better. Or perhaps he had just become used to it; lately he only noticed the warm, rancid stench of his rotting scalp when he woke up.

Wang broke the silence, asking one of the police guards if that was the camp hospital ahead. The guard responded evenly: "You know, we care so much about you. So we are taking you to get a physical. Look how well the party treats you. Normally, this kind of thing never happens in a labor camp."

Inside the facility, the practitioners lined up and, one by one, had a large blood sample drawn. Then a urine sample, electrocardiogram, abdominal X-ray, and eye exam. When Wang pointed to his head, the doctor mumbled something about it being normal and motioned for the next patient. Walking back to camp, the prisoners felt relieved, even a tad cocky, about the whole thing. In spite of all the torture they had endured and the brutal conditions, even the government would be forced to see that practitioners of Falun Gong were healthy.

They never did learn the results of any of those medical tests, Wang says, a little smile suddenly breaking through. He can't help it. He survived.

I spoke with Wang in 2007, just one out of over 100 interviews for a book on the clash between Falun Gong and the Chinese state. Wang's story is not new. Two prominent Canadian human rights attorneys, David Kilgour and David Matas, outlined his case and many others in their "Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China," published and posted on the web in 2006.

By interviewing Wang, I was tipping my hat to the extensive research already done by others. I was not expecting to see Wang's pattern repeated as my interviews progressed, nor did I expect to find that organ harvesting had spread beyond Falun Gong. I was wrong.

Falun Gong became wildly popular in China during the late 1990s. For various reasons--perhaps because the membership of this movement was larger than that of the Chinese Communist party (and intersected with it), or because the legacy of Tiananmen was unresolved, or because 70 million people suddenly seemed to be looking for a way into heaven (other than money)--the party decided to eliminate it. In 1998, the party quietly canceled the business licenses of people who practiced Falun Gong. In 1999 came mass arrests, seizure of assets, and torture. Then, starting in 2000, as the movement responded by becoming more openly activist, demonstrating at Tiananmen and hijacking television signals on the mainland, the death toll started to climb, reaching approximately 3,000 confirmed deaths by torture, execution, and neglect by 2005.

At any given time, 100,000 Falun Gong practitioners were said to be somewhere in the Chinese penal system. Like most numbers coming out of China, these were crude estimates, further rendered unreliable by the chatter of claim and counterclaim. But one point is beyond dispute: The repression of Falun Gong spun out of control. Arrests, sentencing, and whatever took place in the detention centers, psychiatric institutions, and labor camps were not following any established legal procedure or restraint. As an act of passive resistance, or simply to avoid trouble for their families, many Falun Gong began withholding their names from the police, identifying themselves simply as "practitioner" or "Dafa disciple." When asked for their home province, they would say "the universe." For these, the nameless ones, whose families had no way of tracing them or agitating on their behalf, there may be no records at all.

In early 2006, the first charges of large-scale harvesting--surgical removal of organs while the prisoners were still alive, though of course the procedure killed them--of Falun Gong emerged from Northeast China. The charges set off a quiet storm in the human rights community. Yet the charge was not far-fetched.

Harry Wu, a Chinese dissident who established the Laogai Foundation, had already produced reams of evidence that the state, after executing criminals formally sentenced to death, was selling their kidneys, livers, corneas, and other body parts to Chinese and foreigners, anyone who could pay the price. The practice started in the mid-1980s. By the mid-1990s, with the use of anti-tissue-rejection drugs pioneered by China, the business had progressed. Mobile organ-harvesting vans run by the armed services were routinely parked just outside the killing grounds to ensure that the military hospitals got first pick. This wasn't top secret. I spoke with a former Chinese police officer, a simple man from the countryside, who said that, as a favor to a condemned man's friend, he had popped open the back of such a van and unzipped the body bag. The corpse's chest had been picked clean.

Taiwanese doctors who arranged for patients to receive transplants on the mainland claim that there was no oversight of the system, no central Chinese database of organs and medical histories of donors, no red tape to diminish medical profits. So the real question was, at $62,000 for a fresh kidney, why would Chinese hospitals waste any body they could get their hands on?

Yet what initially drew most fire from skeptics was the claim that organs were being harvested from people before they died. For all the Falun Gong theatrics, this claim was not so outlandish either. Any medical expert knows that a recipient is far less likely to reject a live organ; and any transplant dealer will confirm that buyers will pay more for one. Until recently, high volume Chinese transplant centers openly advertised the use of live donors on their websites.

It helps that brain death is not legally recognized in China; only when the heart stops beating is the patient actually considered dead. That means doctors can shoot a prisoner in the head, as it were, surgically, then remove the organs before the heart stops beating. Or they can administer anesthesia, remove the organs, and when the operation is nearing completion introduce a heart-stopping drug--the latest method. Either way, the prisoner has been executed, and harvesting is just fun along the way. In fact, according to doctors I have spoken to recently, all well versed in current mainland practices, live-organ harvesting of death-row prisoners in the course of execution is routine.

The real problem was that the charges came from Falun Gong--always the unplanned child of the dissident community. Unlike the Tiananmen student leaders and other Chinese prisoners of conscience who had settled into Western exile, Falun Gong marched to a distinctly Chinese drum. With its roots in a spiritual tradition from the Chinese heartland, Falun Gong would never have built a version of the Statue of Liberty and paraded it around for CNN. Indeed, to Western observers, Falun Gong public relations carried some of the uncouthness of Communist party culture: a perception that practitioners tended to exaggerate, to create torture tableaux straight out of a Cultural Revolution opera, to spout slogans rather than facts.

For various reasons, some valid, some shameful, the credibility of persecuted refugees has often been doubted in the West. In 1939, a British Foreign Office official, politely speaking for the majority, described the Jews as not, perhaps, entirely reliable witnesses. During the Great Leap Forward, emaciated refugees from the mainland poured into Hong Kong, yammering about deserted villages and cannibalism. Sober Western journalists ignored these accounts as subjective and biased.

The yammering of a spiritual revivalist apparently counts for even less than the testimony of a peasant or a Jew. Thus, when Falun Gong unveiled a doctor's wife who claimed that her husband, a surgeon, had removed thousands of corneas from practitioners in a Northeastern Chinese hospital named Sujiatun, the charge met with guarded skepticism from the dissident community and almost complete silence from the Western press (with the exception of this magazine and National Review).

As Falun Gong committees kicked into full investigative mode, the Canadian lawyers Kilgour and Matas compiled the accumulating evidence in their report. It included transcripts of recorded phone calls in which Chinese doctors confirmed that their organ donors were young, healthy, and practiced Falun Gong; written testimony from the mainland of practitioners' experiences in detention; an explosion in organ transplant activity coinciding with a rise in the Falun Gong incarceration rate, with international customers waiting as little as a week for a tissue match (in most countries, patients waited over a year). Finally, Kilgour and Matas compared the execution rate in China (essentially constant, according to Amnesty International) and the number of transplants. It left a discrepancy of 41,500 unexplained cases over a five-year span.

This report has never been refuted point by point, yet the vast majority of human rights activists have kept their distance. Since Falun Gong's claims were suspect, their allies' assertions were suspect. Transplant doctors who claimed to have Falun Gong organ donors in the basement? They were just saying what potential organ recipients wanted to hear. Written testimony from practitioners? They'd been prepped by activists. The rise in organ transplant activity? Maybe just better reporting. The discrepancy between executions and transplants? As a respected human rights scholar asked me, why did Kilgour and Matas use Amnesty International's estimate of the number of executions in China to suggest the execution rate had stayed constant for 10 years? Even Amnesty acknowledges their numbers might represent a gross understatement. There might be no discrepancy at all.

Finally, why had no real witness, a doctor or nurse who had actually operated on Falun Gong practitioners, come forward? Without such proof (although such an individual's credibility can always be savaged, even with supporting documents), human rights advocates argued there was no reason to take the story seriously. There certainly were not sufficient grounds for President Bush to mention organ harvesting in his human rights speech on the eve of the Beijing Olympics.

The critics had hinted at legitimate points of discussion. But so had the Chinese government: Fresh off the confession in 2005 that organs were being harvested from ordinary death-row prisoners, and after issuing their predictable denials of harvesting organs from Falun Gong, Beijing suddenly passed a law in July 2006 forbidding the sale of organs without the consent of the donor.

Three things happened. The organ supply tightened. Prices doubled. And transplants continued. So unless there has been a dramatic cultural shift since 2004, when a Chinese report found that only 1.5 percent of transplanted kidneys were donated by relatives, the organs being sold must still come from somewhere. Let's assume it's prisoners--that's what Taiwanese doctors think--and theorize that the new law was a signal: Get your consent forms and stop harvesting from Falun Gong. For now.

And the critics had one thing exactly right: Precision is an illusion. No taped conversation with a mainland doctor is unimpeachable. All witnesses from China have mixed motives, always. And, again, no numbers from China, even the one in the last paragraph, can be considered definitive.

Indeed, the entire investigation must be understood to be still at an early, even primitive, stage. We do not really know the scale of what is happening yet. Think of 1820, when a handful of doctors, scientists, and amateur fossil hunters were trying to make sense of scattered suggestive evidence and a disjointed pile of bones. Twenty-two years would pass before an English paleontologist so much as coined the term "dinosaur"--"terrible lizard"--and the modern study of these extinct creatures got seriously under way. Those of us researching the harvesting of organs from involuntary donors in China are like the early dinosaur hunters. We don't work in close consultation with each other. We are still waiting for even one doctor who has harvested organs from living prisoners of conscience to emerge from the mainland. Until that happens, it is true, we don't even have dinosaur bones. But we do have tracks. Here are some that I've found.

Qu Yangyao, an articulate Chinese professional, holds three master's degrees. She is also the earliest refugee to describe an "organs only" medical examination. Qu escaped to Sydney last year. While a prisoner in China in June 2000, she refused to "transform"--to sign a statement rejecting Falun Gong--and was eventually transferred to a labor camp. Qu's health was fairly good, though she had lost some weight from hunger strikes. Given Qu's status and education, there were reasons to keep her healthy. The Chinese police wanted to avoid deaths in custody--less paperwork, fewer questions. At least, so Qu assumed.

Qu was 35 years old when the police escorted her and two other practitioners into a hospital. Qu distinctly remembers the drawing of a large volume of blood, then a chest X-ray, and probing. "I wasn't sure what it was about. They just touch you in different places . . . abdomen, liver." She doesn't remember giving a urine sample at that time, but the doctor did shine a light in her eyes, examining her corneas.

Did the doctor then ask her to trace the movement of his light with her eyes, or check her peripheral vision? No. He just checked her corneas, skipping any test involving brain function. And that was it: no hammer on the knee, no feeling for lymph nodes, no examination of ears or mouth or genitals--the doctor checked her retail organs and nothing else.

I may have felt a silent chill run up my spine at points in our interview, but Qu, like many educated subjects, seemed initially unaware of the potential implications of what she was telling me. Many prisoners preserve a kind of "it can't happen here" sensibility. "I'm too important to be wiped out" is the survivor's mantra. In the majority of the interviews presented here, my subjects, though aware of the organ harvesting issue, had no clear idea of my line of questioning or the "right" answers.

Falun Gong practitioners are forbidden to lie. That doesn't mean they never do. In the course of my interviews I've heard a few distortions. Not because people have been "prepped," but because they've suffered trauma. Deliberate distortions, though, are exceedingly rare. The best way to guard against false testimony is to rely on extended sit-down interviews.

In all, I interviewed 15 Falun Gong refugees from labor camps or extended detention who had experienced something inexplicable in a medical setting. My research assistant, Leeshai Lemish, interviewed Dai Ying in Norway, bringing our total to 16. If that number seems low, consider the difficulty of survival and escape. Even so, just over half of the subjects can be ruled out as serious candidates for organ harvesting: too old, too physically damaged from hard labor, or too emaciated from hunger strikes. Some were simply too shaky in their recall of specific procedures to be much help to us. Some were the subjects of drug tests. Some received seemingly normal, comprehensive physicals, though even such people sometimes offered valuable clues.

For example, Lin Jie, a woman in her early 60s living in Sydney, reported that in May 2001, while she was incarcerated in the Chongqing Yong Chaun Women's Jail, over 100 Falun Gong women were examined "all over the body, very detailed. And they asked about our medical history." Fine. Yet Lin found herself wondering why "one police per practitioner" escorted the women through the physical, as if they were dangerous criminals. Practitioners of Falun Gong are many things--intense, moralistic, single-minded--but they are strictly nonviolent. Clearly someone in the Chinese security system was nervous.

Or take Jing Tian, a female refugee in her 40s, now in Bangkok. In March 2002, the Shenyang Detention Center gave a comprehensive physical to all the practitioners. Jing watched the procedure carefully and saw nothing unusual. Then, in September, the authorities started expensive blood tests (these would cost about $300 per subject in the West). Jing observed that they were drawing enough blood to fill up eight test tubes per practitioner, enough for advanced diagnostics or tissue matching. Jia Xiarong, a middle-aged female prisoner who came from a family of well-connected officials, told Jing outright: "They are doing this because some aging official needs an organ."

But Jing sensed something else in the air that fall, something more substantial: Prisoners were arriving in the middle of the night and disappearing before dawn. There were transports to "hospital civil defense structures" with names like Sujiatun and Yida, and practitioners with no names, only numbers.

It was not a good time to be an angry young practitioner, according to a refugee in her 30s recently arrived in Hong Kong. She has family in China, so let's call her Jiansheng Chen. Back in 2002, Chen noticed another pattern. When the blood tests started, she said, "before signing a statement [renouncing Falun Gong] the practitioners were all given physicals. After they signed, they wouldn't get a physical again."

Chen was a "nontransformable"--with an edge. Not only did she refuse to renounce Falun Gong, but she shouted down anyone who did. Chen was getting medication three times a day (possibly sedatives), so drug-testing can't be ruled out. Yet as her resistance dragged on, the police said: "If you don't transform, we'll send you away. The path you have chosen is the path of death." For eight days efforts were made to persuade Chen to renounce Falun Gong or gain her submission by torture. Suddenly the guards ordered her to write a suicide note. Chen mocked them: "I'm not dead. So why should I sign a death certificate?"

The director brought in a group of military police doctors wearing white uniforms, male and female. The labor camp police were "very frightened" at this point, according to Chen. They kept repeating: "If you still won't transform, what waits for you is a path to death."

Chen was blindfolded. Then she heard a familiar policewoman's voice asking the doctors to leave for a minute. When they were alone, the policewoman began pleading with her: "Chen, your life is going to be taken away. I'm not kidding you. We've been here together all this time, we've made at least some sort of connection by now. I can't bear to see this--a living person in front of my eyes about to be wiped out."

Chen stayed silent. She didn't trust the policewoman--why should she? In the last eight days, she had been hung from the ceiling. She had been burned with electric batons. She had drunk her own urine. So, the latest nice-nice trick was unconvincing. Then Chen noticed something dripping on her hand--the policewoman's tears. Chen allowed that she would think about transforming. "That's all I need," the policewoman said. After a protracted argument with the doctors, the police left.

Practitioners like to talk about altering the behavior of police and security personnel through the power of their own belief. It's a favorite trope. Just as a prisoner of war is duty bound to attempt escape, a Falun Gong practitioner is required by his moral code to try to save sentient beings. In this spiritual calculus, the policeman who uses torture destroys himself, not the practitioner. If the practitioner can alter the policeman's behavior, by moral example or supernatural means, there's some natural pride, even if the practitioner still gets tortured.

But practitioners vary. Chen did not tell her story with composure. She screamed it out cathartically, in a single note of abrasive, consuming fury. It's also relevant that Chen is not just stubborn, impossible, and a little mad, but young, attractive, and charismatic. She gave her account of the policewoman without braggadocio, only abject, shrieking shame at having finally signed a transformation statement. The policewoman had met a fellow warrior--her tears are plausible.

Dai Ying is a 50-year-old female refugee living in Sweden. As 2003 began, 180 Falun Gong were tested in Sanshui labor camp. The usual our-party-especially-cares-for-you speech was followed by X-rays, the drawing of massive blood samples, cardiograms, urine tests, and then probes: "They had us lie on [our] stomachs and examined our kidneys. They tapped on them and ask[ed] us if that hurt."

And that was it--organs only, hold the corneas--a fact that Dai, almost blind from torture at the time, remembers vividly. Corneas are relatively small-ticket items, worth perhaps $30,000 each. By 2003, Chinese doctors had mastered the liver transplant, worth about $115,000 from a foreign customer.

To meet the demand, a new source of supply was needed. Fang Siyi is a 40-year-old female refugee in Bangkok. Incarcerated from 2002 to 2005, Fang was examined repeatedly and then, in 2003, picked out for special testing in the Jilin detention center in Northeast China.

Fang had never seen the doctors before: "Upon arriving here, they changed into labor camp uniforms. But what struck me is that they seemed to be military doctors." Twelve prisoners had been selected. Fang estimates that eight were Falun Gong. How did she know? "For Falun Gong, they called them, Little Faluns." Who were the other four? "[The staff] would say, Here comes another one of those Eastern Lightning."

Eastern Lightning are Christians--fringy, out-there Chinese Christians to us, incurable, nontransformable deviants to the party. Jing, too, remembers Eastern Lightning being given blood tests in 2002, but Fang remembers the Jilin exam as far more focused: "The additional examinations would just be blood tests, electro-cardiograms, and X-rays, nothing else. It was Falun Gong practitioners and Christians."

Compassion fatigue seeping in? I'll keep this short.

"Masanjia Confidential" has family in China, so prudence dictates mentioning only that she's about 40 and is in Bangkok. Her experience takes us into what I call the "Late Harvest Era" of 2005, when many practitioners seem to have been whisked off to wham-bam organ exams and then promptly disappeared. When I asked her if anyone in Masanjia Labor Camp actually received medical treatment, she responded without missing a beat: "If people came in on a stretcher, they were given cursory treatment. In good health, a comprehensive exam. .  .  . They needed healthy people, young people. If you were an auntie in your 60s or 70s they wouldn't pay attention to you."

Were there military personnel present at the physicals? "They didn't need them. Masanjia is very close to Sujiatun [hospital]--a pretty quick drive. If they needed someone they could just tie them up and send them over. .  .  . Usually they were taken at night."

In 2007, Yu Xinhui, free after five years in Guangdong prison, signed himself, his wife, and their infant son up for a foreign trip with a Chinese tour group. Upon arriving in Bangkok, they fled to the YMCA and applied for U.N. refugee status. Yu is in his 30s, the picture of robust health. While in prison, he was tested repeatedly, finally graduating to an "organs-only" exam under military supervision in 2005.

Yu makes a good show of indulging my questions, but to him it was never a big mystery: "There was common knowledge of organ harvesting in the prison. .  .  . Even before you die, your organs are already reserved." Criminal prisoners would taunt the practitioners: "If you don't do what we say we'll torture you to death and sell your organs." That sounds like a stupid game, but everyone knew there was a real list: Prisoners and practitioners alike would be taken away on an annual schedule. Yu knew which month the buses would arrive and where they would park in the courtyard. He gave me a tour of the exact spot on Google Earth.

When Falun Gong's claims about organ harvesting surfaced in March 2006, Yu still languished in prison, incommunicado. So it's all the more interesting that he vividly remembers a large, panicky deportation of prisoners (perhaps 400 people, including practitioners) in May 2006. "It was terrifying," Yu says. "Even I was terrified." The timing is consistent: With all the bad publicity, mainland doctors were hinting at a close-of-business sale on organs at exactly this time.

By 2007, the consensus was that the Chinese government had shut down Falun Gong harvesting to avoid any embarrassing new disclosures before the Olympics. So my final case must be viewed as borderline, a comprehensive medical exam followed by .  .  . well, judge for yourself.

Liu Guifu is a 48-year-old woman recently arrived in Bangkok. She got a soup-to-nuts physical--really a series of them--in Beijing Women's Labor Camp in 2007. She was also diagnosed as schizophrenic and possibly given drugs.

But she remembers her exams pretty well. She was given three urine tests in a single month. She was told to drink fluids and refrain from urinating until she got to the hospital. Was this testing for diabetes or drugs? It can't be ruled out. But neither can kidney-function assessment. And three major blood samples were drawn in the same month, at a cost of about $1,000. Was the labor camp concerned about Liu's health? Or the health of a particular organ? Perhaps an organ that was being tissue-matched with a high-ranking cadre or a rich foreign customer?

The critical fact is that Liu was both a member of a nontransformed Falun Gong brigade with a history of being used for organs and was considered mentally ill. She was useless, the closest approximation we have to a nameless practitioner, one of the ones who never gave their names or provinces to the authorities and so lost their meager social protections.

There were certainly hundreds, perhaps thousands, of practitioners identified by numbers only. I've heard that number two hundred and something was a talented young female artist with nice skin, but I don't really know. None of them made it out of China alive.

None of them likely will. Tibetan sources estimate that 5,000 protesters disappeared in this year's crackdown. Many have been sent to Qinghai, a potential center of organ harvesting. But that's speculative. Both the Taiwanese doctors who investigate organ harvesting and those who arrange transplants for their Taiwanese patients agree on one point: The closing ceremony of the Olympics made it once again open season for harvesting.

Some in the human rights community will read that last assertion with skepticism. Until there is countervailing evidence, however, I'll bet on bargain-basement prices for organs in China. I confess, I feel a touch of burnout myself at this thought. It's an occupational hazard.

It's why I told that one-night-in-Bangkok joke to get you to read beyond the first paragraph. Yet what's really laughable is the foot-dragging, formalistic, faintly embarrassed response of so many to the murder of prisoners of conscience for the purpose of harvesting their organs. That's an evil crime.

Washington faces its own imperatives: The riptide of Chinese financial power is strong. Those in government do not want to hear about Falun Gong and genocide at a time of financial crisis, with China holding large numbers of U.S. bonds. So the story continues to founder under the lead weight of American political and journalistic apathy. At least the Europeans have given it some air. They can afford to. They aren't the leader of the free world.

It will be argued--quietly, of course--that America has no point of easy leverage, no ability to undo what has been done, no silver bullet that can change the Chinese regime. Perhaps not, but we could ban Americans from getting organ transplants in China. We could boycott Chinese medical conferences. Sever medical ties. Embargo surgical equipment. And refuse to hold any diplomatic summits until the Chinese put in place an explicit, comprehensive database of every organ donor in China.

We may have to live with the Chinese Communist party, for now. For that matter, we can console ourselves that there are no bones, for now. There will be none until the party falls and the Chinese people begin to sift through the graves and ashes.

We are all allowed a touch of compassion fatigue--it's understandable. But make no mistake: There are terrible lizards. And now that the Olympic Games are over, and the cameras have turned away, they roam the earth again.

Ethan Gutmann, an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, wishes to thank the Earhart Foundation and the Wallenberg family of Sweden for research support.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/824qbcjr.asp


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« Reply #23 on: August 08, 2012, 07:31:53 am »

http://www.apfn.org/apfn/camps.htm
Georgia: Bill to replace electric chair with guillotine

Georgia lawmaker Doug Teper (Democrat) has proposed a bill to replace the state's electric chair with the guillotine. Teper's reasoning? It would allow for death-row inmates as organ donors, he says, since the "Blade makes a clean cut and leaves vital organs intact."

 In 1995, a move to replace the electric chair with lethal injection (poisoning) failed in Georgia's assembly because legislators feared that prisoners could argue for a new sentencing hearing if the state changed the law.

 The Guillotine, invented by the French Dr. Guillotine, was mainly used in the 18th and 19th century and chops off a person's head. It hasn't been used for decades in any country on this planet.

 [March 5, 1996; based upon news report]

Watcher comments: There is a group of lawmakers out there who think chopping people's heads off is a good idea. Criminals are a good first step in acclimating the public to the spectacle of death by beheading. The practical application of "organ donation" is a good excuse to implement guillotine production. By the time the antichrist takes control, there should be some very skilled guillotine craftsman out there, and the infrastructure for transporting such apparatus will be fully in place. Isn't that convenient?
Read the Chilling Proposition from Teper et.

HB 1274 - Death penalty; guillotine provisions


SECTION 1.

  1- 8  The General Assembly finds that while prisoners condemned to
  1- 9  death may wish to donate one or more of their organs for
  1-10  transplant, any such desire is thwarted by the fact that
  1-11  electrocution makes all such organs unsuitable for
  1-12  transplant. The intent of the General Assembly in enacting
  1-13  this legislation is to provide for a method of execution
  1-14  which is compatible with the donation of organs by a
  1-15  condemned prisoner.

                         SECTION 2.

  1-16  Article 2 of Chapter 10 of Title 17 of the Official Code of
  1-17  Georgia Annotated, relating to the death penalty generally,
  1-18  is amended by striking in its entirety Code Section
  1-19  17-10-38, relating to death sentences generally, and
  1-20  inserting in lieu thereof the following:

  1-21    "17-10-38. (Index)

  1-22    (a) All persons who have been convicted of a capital
  1-23    offense and have had imposed upon them a sentence of death
  1-24    shall, at the election of the condemned, suffer such
  1-25    punishment either by electrocution or by guillotine.   If
  1-26    the condemned fails to make an election by the thirtieth
  1-27    day preceding the date scheduled for execution, punishment
  1-28    shall be by electrocution.

  1-29    (b) In all cases in which the defendant is sentenced to be
  1-30    electrocuted executed, it shall be the duty of the trial
  1-31    judge in passing sentence to direct that the defendant be
 

                                 -1- (Index)

                                                  LC 21 3643

  2- 1    delivered to the Department of Corrections for
  2- 2    electrocution execution at a state correctional
  2- 3    institution designated by the department."

                         SECTION 3.

  2- 4  Said article is further amended by striking in its entirety
  2- 5  Code Section 17-10-44, relating to death chamber apparatus
  2- 6  and related matters, and inserting in lieu thereof the
  2- 7  following:

  2- 8    "17-10-44. (Index)

  2- 9    The Department of Corrections shall provide a death
  2-10    chamber and all necessary apparatus, machinery, and
  2-11    appliances for inflicting the penalty of death by
  2-12    electrocution or by guillotine."
http://web.archive.org/web/20020213222816/http://hardtruth.topcities.com/georgia_bill_guillotine.htmGeorgia House of Representatives - 1995/1996 Sessions
HB 1274 - Death penalty; guillotine provisions
HB 1274 - Death penalty; guillotine provisions
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« Reply #24 on: September 26, 2012, 11:48:39 am »

Organs taken from patients that doctors were pressured to declare brain dead: suit

The New York Organ Donor Network pressured hospital staffers to declare patients brain dead so their body parts could be harvested — and even hired “coaches” to train staffers how to be more persuasive, a bombshell lawsuit charged yesterday.

The federally funded nonprofit used a “quota” system, and leaned heavily on the next of kin to sign consent forms when patients were not registered as organ donors, the suit charged.

“They’re playing God,” said plaintiff Patrick McMahon, 50, an Air Force combat veteran and nurse practitioner who claims he was fired as a transplant coordinator after just four months for protesting the practice.

rest: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/organ_ghouls_of_doom_suit_LxCZMP5uRGgI6yn3ywMN9J
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« Reply #25 on: November 06, 2013, 06:55:56 am »

Scientists closer to freezing human organs



In order to preserve biological materials over an extended period of time, doctors rely on a process known as cryopreservation – a procedure that involves cooling human tissues to sub-zero temperatures. This frozen state effectively blocks chemical reactions from occurring and causing any damage to the materials, allowing them to remain viable for medical use later on.

However, cryopreservation is a risky process and is often reserved for the conservation of smaller groups of tissues or individual cells – such as embryos and stem cells. Freezing larger biological tissues is much more difficult. These materials often contain large amounts of water, which form ice crystals when frozen, causing significant damage to the cells and tissue.

But now, freezing larger amounts of human tissue may soon become a feasible option. Researchers from Villanova University have discovered how ice crystals invade and damage biological material during the freezing process – a significant discovery that could lead to new methods of preventing tissue injury during cryopreservation.

By overcoming this obstacle, freezing complex human tissues such as full-sized donor organs or artificially engineered replacement tissues could be a very real option for physicians.

“If you can cryopreserve tissue or even organs, then you have a way of storing them and of transporting them,” senior author Dr. Jens Karlsson, of the department of mechanical engineering at Villanova University, told FoxNews.com. “Now if you want to do a (lung) transplantation, you’re rushing the harvest organ from one hospital to another by helicopter, and you only have a few hours to do it. But if you’re able to preserve the tissue, then you have as much time as you want and you can really find the best match for the tissue and transport it over much longer distances.”

To better understand how ice interacts with cells as they freeze, Karlsson and his team utilized a video cryomicroscrope, which allowed them to observe the freezing process using high-speed imaging.

“We could record what happens and play it back in slow motion and really see in great detail what the interactions are between the ice, and cells in the tissue,” Karlsson said.

With this microscope, the team monitored the freezing events of genetically modified cells, some of which contained certain junction proteins and some of which did not. These junction proteins either suppressed or encouraged the formation of the cells’ gap junctions and tight junctions– channels that connect adjacent cells together. Gap junctions directly connect the cytoplasm of two cells, while tight junctions provide an even closer connection by firmly stitching together the cells’ plasma membranes.

The researchers found that when the gap junctions were suppressed in the cells, the ice still spread freely throughout the tissue. This meant that the extremely snug tight junctions played a significant role in allowing the ice to infiltrate the cells.

http://www.myfoxny.com/Story/23884053/scientists-closer-to-freezing-human-organs
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« Reply #26 on: September 28, 2014, 07:29:45 am »

Shocking Report Will Reveal How Doctors Hasten Death to Harvest Patients’ Organs

A silent and deadly epidemic is moving across America. No one is broadcasting it. No one is writing about it. Almost no one is even talking about it. But every day in hospitals, nursing homes and hospices across the country, more and more of our medically vulnerable loved ones are being euthanized.

Indeed, some physicians have admitted to this behavior. A 1998 article from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that hastening death is occurring and is not rare. In a survey of 355 oncologists, “(15.8%) reported participating in euthanasia or physician assisted suicide,” and “38 of 53 (72%) oncologists described clearly defined cases of euthanasia or physician assisted suicide.1

doctorsThese decisions are being made by paid medical professionals. And loved ones, to their horror, are finding they’re not even part of the discussion. The patients’ crimes? They’re charged with having insufficient quality of life, being too expensive to keep alive, and being beyond the reach of medical science and therefore beyond hope.

Such judgments may lie behind what seems to be an increase in the “brain death” diagnosis. The difficulty of making a pinpoint diagnosis in such complex neurological matters—and the lucrative financial incentives to harvest organs—will ultimately propel this issue into the forefront of public consciousness and discourse.

Not surprisingly, the current procurement market for human tissues and organs in the United States is booming, driven by insufficient supply and heavy demand. According to The Milliman Report (see page 4), if all 11 tissues and organs could be harvested from a single patient declared brain-dead, however unlikely, the going rate for procurement would exceed half a million dollars. If all costs related to those 11 transplants are counted—preparation, physicians’ services, post-op care and the like—the money involved exceeds $5.5 million.2

It’s crucial to shed a bright light on this menacing darkness, but we need your help. Here are four ways you can assist:

First, we need to hear from healthcare workers and professionals. If you’ve witnessed this happening in your work environment, please come forward and share your observations with us. Perhaps you or someone you know has inside knowledge of the organ donation process as it relates to a situation of euthanasia.

textSecond, we need your personal stories. We’re also looking for family members willing to share healthcare experiences involving a loved one that are similar to what we’ve conveyed in this letter.

Like this pro-life news article? Please support LifeNews during our Fall 2014 fundraising campaign with a donation!

Please trust that if you request your identity be held in confidence, that confidentiality will not be violated.

Third, we need people willing to be interviewed on camera. We have a golden opportunity to educate more Americans to euthanasia in our midst. A special episode of the Emmy© award-winning pro-life television series Facing Life Head-On with Brad Mattes plans to feature real-life accounts of people sharing specifics of this American travesty. The program reaches tens of millions of American households, so imagine the number of people whose eyes could be opened. America will be told what is happening to the elderly, the chronically sick and the cognitively disabled. If necessary, we can keep the identity of our TV guests confidential.

Finally, we need your prayers. This is, first and foremost, a battle against powers and principalities. We cannot hope to win on our own. Only the power of prayer will permit us to expose this hideous and inhumane attack on precious human life.

If you prefer not to be on television, we still need you. Our ultimate goal is to build a network of people who can speak publicly about these issues to educate others regarding this horrific, unnoticed practice. This may entail speaking to pro-life groups or others sympathetic to protecting innocent human life; addressing a state legislative committee regarding pending legislation; or speaking to a hospital ethics committee as they struggle with a challenging situation or policy. Our goal is to develop a network of experienced experts who can speak directly to the issues at hand.

This is literally a life-and-death matter. And we who are blessed to have life and a voice must intervene to help those who are in danger of having life taken from them. We hope to hear from you soon.

http://www.lifenews.com/2014/09/26/shocking-report-will-reveal-how-doctors-hasten-death-to-harvest-patients-organs/
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« Reply #27 on: October 18, 2014, 07:21:59 am »

Bioethics Push Poll to Allow Killing for Organs

To donate vital organs, a donor must be dead.

This is known as the “dead donor rule, I have been warning that utilitarian bioethicists and transplant medical professionals want to shatter the DDR to permit killing living living profoundly cognitively disabled patients for their organs.

Now, we see what appears to me to be a push poll type question in a study measuring popular support for such a change in the law.

A push poll seeks to obtain a desired answer by the way the question is framed. Here is the question from “Abandoning the Dead Donor Rule?” in the Journal of Medical Ethics:

    Jason has been in a very bad car accident. He suffered a severe head injury and is now in the hospital. As a result of the injury, Jason is completely unconscious.

    He cannot hear or feel anything, cannot remember or think about anything, he is not aware of anything, and his condition is irreversible. Jason will never wake up.

As we have seen in recent stories of awake and aware patients diagnosed in a persistent vegetative state–and perhaps, the Jahi McMath brain death case–this question sets up a false premise. Few, if any, cases are this clear cut,this sure. Indeed, the more we learn about the brain and consciousness, the less we know–as demonstrated by the proven brain interactivity in some patients thought to be completely unaware.

Thus, it seems to me that the question was posed in this unrealistic way to obtain a desired result of allowing the harvest.

Back to the question:

    He also cannot breathe without mechanical support, but is on a breathing machine that keeps his lungs working. Without the machine, Jason’s heart and all other organs would stop within minutes. Although he will never wake up and cannot breathe without the support of the machine, Jason is still biologically alive.

In such scenarios, a patient can already be a donor by having life support removed, and IF–it doesn’t always happen as expected–he goes into cardiac arrest, be declared dead a few minutes later and obtain organs.

But that important fact isn’t mentioned in the question posed:

    Before the injury, Jason wanted to be an organ donor. The organs will function best if they are removed while Jason’s heart is still beating and while he is still on the breathing machine. If the organs are removed while Jason is still on the machine, he would die from the removal of organs (in other words, the surgery would cause Jason’s biological death).

The question then asks how many people think that would be okay, and based on the push poll nature of the question, obtain a majority support for killing for organs.

Moreover, were the dead donor rule be killed, the patients harvested would not be limited to the relatively few cases such as described above.

Polling is like statistics, you can make them say anything.


http://www.nationalreview.com/human-exceptionalism/389841/bioethics-push-poll-allow-killing-organs-wesley-j-smith
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« Reply #28 on: March 10, 2016, 02:25:56 am »

Horror as patient wakes up in NY hospital with doctors trying to harvest her organs for transplant profits

(NaturalNews) I've warned Natural News readers about this several times over the last decade: Do NOT become an organ donor! Although you may wish to help others out of the goodness of your (literal) heart, the sinister truth is that doctors routinely harvest organs from LIVING patients right here in the USA.

And here's yet more proof. This true story will astound you.

Waking up on the organ harvesting table...

A woman named Colleen Burns recently opened her eyes to find herself on an operating table in a hospital in Syracuse, NY. Looking around, she noticed that she was the subject of the operation. It turns out doctors were about to harvest her organs and send them to other waiting surgeons who would transplant them into other patients.

This isn't fiction. It was covered by ABC News http://abcnews.go.com/Health/patient-wakes-doctors-remove-organs/story?id=19609438 and several other news sources. It really happened.

And how did it happen? Doctors falsely pronounced her dead by fraudulently claiming she had suffered "cardiopulmonary arrest" and "irreversible brain damage." This gave them the medical justification to start slicing away even while the woman's heart was still beating.

This is a big "holy crap I didn't know that" fact about organ donations: Doctors don't wait until you're really dead. At least not by any normal definition of "dead."

See, you and I think "dead" means your heart isn't beating, your brain isn't functioning, and you're lifeless. But hospitals -- which happen to generate huge profits from the trade of transplant organs -- have a strong financial incentive to declare you "medically dead" long before you're actually lifeless.

They can, in fact, declare you "dead" even when your heart is still beating and you still have brain activity. And they often do. This is how a lot of the organ harvesting in America actually gets done: patients that are on the verge of death (but not yet actually dead) are simply "declared" dead, then their organs are quickly removed, killing them for good.

It's a crime that takes place every day in America, where U.S. hospitals have been caught over and over again engaging in black market organ trafficking.

Read: U.S. Hospitals Secretly Promote Black Market Trading of Harvested Organs for Transplants

A multi-billion-dollar industry

Organ trafficking is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Wealthy people around the world are always in need of new kidneys, new livers, new hearts and other body parts.

And guess who makes the money on all these organ transplants? The doctors, hospitals and drug companies, of course. Organ transplants are a hugely profitable industry -- largely because they get the organs for free. Patients who are killed by these doctors are never paid for their organs. The fact that they "donate" them actually means they are donating their immensely valuable organs to a for-profit system that's going to earn potentially millions of dollars off the organs of a single donor.

So while the donor patient gets murdered for his or her organs, the doctors engaged in organ removal and organ transplants get wealthy. Transplant recipients and health insurance companies pay huge dollars for organ transplant surgeries, and the profits are ongoing because transplant recipients must also pay for a long course of organ transplant anti-rejection drugs, all priced at monopoly prices (of course).

Truth be told, the organ transplant industry is all about money -- at any cost. It's about killing patients who might otherwise survive in order to take their organs and make millions of dollars transplanting them into other patients... patients who typically only have a few months to live even after the transplant.

Read: Global organ harvesting a booming black market business; a kidney harvested every hour.

Transplanted organs are often damaged or infested with disease

Here's another dirty little trick the organ transplant industry will never tell you: The organs that are transplanted into other patients are often fatally damaged and full of infectious diseases.

As yet more proof of this, take the case of Colleen Burns, mentioned above. She tried to commit suicide by taking a toxic combination of prescription medications. According to the doctors, this toxic cocktail of chemicals was fatal, and it killed her (they pronounced her dead).

Yet, simultaneously, they still insisted her organs were healthy enough to transplant into another patient! That's why they almost began harvesting them.

In other words, even organs that doctors know are heavily damaged with toxic chemical cocktails will still be transplanted into other patients! (This is 100% true.)

But it's even worse than that...

Transplant organs often riddled with disease: hepatitis, stealth viruses, mad cow disease and more

There are effectively zero quality standards in the organ transplant industry. If the organ still functions at any level, it's "good enough" to be slapped into a transplant patient even though that organ might actually kill them.

One of the reasons organ transplant patients often die so quickly after receiving transplants is because the organs they often receive are ticking time bombs of disease.

Introducing a diseased heart or kidney into someone's body, for example, can suddenly infest that person with hundreds or even thousands of viruses and blood-borne illnesses that quickly overcome their weakened immune systems. This is made even worse by the anti-rejection drugs which, by definition, cause extreme suppression of immune function.

So at the exact time that new diseases are being introduced into the transplant recipient's body, their immune system is being undermined by anti-rejection drugs. Not surprisingly, this is a recipe for disaster, and that's one reason why so many patients die so quickly after receiving "donor" organs.

Iraq war veteran killed by cancer-ridden transplant lungs

As an example of what I just described above, in 2009, an Iraq war veteran named Matthew Millington was given a lung transplant using lungs that were riddled with a fast-growing cancer.

Not surprisingly, he died less than 10 months later. Did all the organ transplant doctors and surgeons give him a refund for their botched procedure? Of course not! Organ transplants do not come with warranties, and you're often given a diseased, damaged or heavily infested organ that's going to kill you. (But you still gotta pay up!)

There are roughly 100,000 people waiting for organ transplants in the USA right now. But there are only a fraction of that number of organs available in any given year, so doctors are under intense pressure to 1) harvest organs from people who aren't yet dead, and 2) use ANY organs they can find, even organs that are riddled with disease.

Again, these are the dirty little secrets of the organ transplant industry that you'll never be told by any doctor. Expect to hear nothing but denials if you ask organ transplant doctors about any of this.

More healthy organ donors "need to suddenly die"

The other challenge the transplant industry faces is that healthy people who take care of their organs through nutrition and exercise simply don't tend to die very often. The kind of people most likely to die (and therefore most like to donate organs) are alcoholics, drug addicts and people who are obese and diseased. Therefore, those are the kind of organs that end up being available for transplant: nasty "fatty" livers and cancerous lungs, for example.

Ideally, the organ transplant industry would like to see a lot of young, healthy people getting decapitated in military training exercises or automobile accidents. That would supply a fresh supply of healthy organs that might actually be worth transplanting. In China, of course, this is why Falun Gong members are routinely arrested and imprisoned: they eat super-healthy diets and so have high-grade organs that can be profitably harvested from political prisoners there.

The practice of arresting people, imprisoning them and sometimes even murdering them for their organs is a lot more widespread than you think. How do you suppose Steve Jobs got a new liver so quickly, even while thousands of other people were waiting for one? He bought it. Gee, do you really think Steve Jobs stood in line like everyone else and then magically a liver appeared for him much faster than for anyone else?

Presumed consent

There is a push under way around the world to harvest organs from everyone who doesn't explicitly say no. These laws are called "presumed consent" laws, and they exist only to provide a fresh supply of human organs to generate billions of dollars in profits for the sick, criminal-minded organ transplant industry.

As a 2011 article in the British Medical Journal explains, these "presumed consent" laws mean doctors can start harvesting the organs of your wife, your children or other loved ones without even asking family members for permission!

As the BMJ article explains:

Presumed consent is alternatively known as an 'opt-out' system and means that unless the deceased has expressed a wish in life not to be an organ donor then consent will be assumed. This can be divided into what is known as a 'hard opt-out' where the family are not consulted.

There's even a website about this -- PresumedConsent.org -- which uses a lot of flowery language and feel-good imagery to hide the fact that it's pushing for doctors to pronounce more patients "dead" and take their organs so that the organ transplant industry can make a few billion more dollars each year.

What we're talking about here is coercive organ harvesting in order to feed the organ trafficking and transplant industries.

Think about that the next time some clueless paper-pusher asks you at the DMV, "Do you want to be an organ donor?"

Just answer: "No thanks. I prefer that doctors actually try to keep me alive."

Don't give doctors any incentive to kill you. They already kill enough patients even when they aren't trying.

Trust me on this: say NO to organ donation. If you really want to help people, teach them to protect the organs God already gave them through superfoods, nutrition, exercise and healthy living.

Read more:

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/041152_transplant_patients_organ_harvesting_presumed_consent.html#ixzz42UEV2R1S
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« Reply #29 on: March 16, 2016, 12:40:10 am »

NHS to harvest babies' organs: 'Ghoulish' proposal gives mothers pregnant with a damaged foetus an agonising choice - abort the dying child or give birth so body parts can be used for transplants
Mothers of children with fatal defects will have the option to give birth
Once the infant has been declared stillborn, doctors will remove its organs
They will then be used to save the lives of other children who are currently being placed on 7,000-strong waiting list
The practice could raise ethical questions while alleviating organ shortage
For more of the latest on the NHS proposal visit www.dailymail.co.uk/nhs


Women whose babies develop fatal defects in the early stages of pregnancy will be given advice on going ahead with the birth so the NHS can harvest their organs, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Most expectant mothers opt for termination after being told the devastating news their child has no chance of survival once born.

But now, amid a chronic shortage of donated organs, mums will be 'supported' to have the baby at nine months so that the child's vital organs can be taken for transplant.



Last night the proposal sparked an ethical debate – with one critic describing it as a 'ghoulish suggestion' that would undermine public confidence in organ donation.

The move was revealed at a medical conference where NHS transplant surgeons said they wanted to take more organs from babies nationally to address a dire shortage.

As part of this drive, midwives and other NHS workers are to be educated about the potential for using babies' organs in transplants.

In the past two years, only 11 babies under two months have become organ donors. But doctors
believe they could raise that figure to around 100 a year.

Speaking of obtaining more organs from newborns, transplant surgeon Niaz Ahmad, of St James's University Hospital in Leeds, said: 'We are looking at rolling it out as a viable source of organ transplantation nationally.

'A number of staff in the NHS are not aware that these organs can be used. They need to be aware. These can be transplanted, they work, and they work long-term.'

One specific case medics are considering are babies diagnosed with a brain defect called anencephaly, which can be detected by routine scans as early as 12 weeks and which gives babies no chance of survival.

Under the new proposals, mothers would give birth in the normal way and once doctors had certified the infant dead, its vital organs would be removed. However, donation would not be raised when a woman was still deciding whether or not to have an abortion – and nobody would be compelled to donate their baby's organs.

In some cases, where donation has been agreed, babies could be certified brain dead but their bodies kept alive by artificial ventilation. Surgeons could then remove organs from these so-called 'heartbeat babies' when they are fresh, maximising what can be used and the chance of successful transplant.

More than 7,000 people are currently on the organ waiting list, and three of them die every day.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3478477/NHS-harvest-babies-organs-Bombshell-new-proposal-mums-pregnant-damaged-babies.html#ixzz432dtTF7q
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