Report on forced organ harvesting in China • Hacker News Board

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#21

Post by stavros » Sat, Jun 22, 2019, 2:07 PM UTC

Setting aside the persecutions, torture and possible genocide, which are undoubtedly heinous, something perplexes me:

Why do we consider it ethical for a state to execute prisoners, but consider harvesting their (now useless) organs to save more lives is ethically abhorrent?

I am much more outraged by the fact that they're killing people for political reasons, the fact that they're harvesting their organs afterwards seems comparatively tame to me.

I realize that harvesting organs from not-quite-dead prisoners, or killing prisoners just to harvest the organs is extremely unethical, but if someone was executed for a different reason, is it so bad to use their organs? They didn't consent to getting killed either, why are we drawing the line at organ harvesting?

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#22

Post by devteambravo » Sat, Jun 22, 2019, 2:07 PM UTC

I was on an operation table, as surgeons cut deep and worked fast, and I cannot imagine what it's like to be one one such surgeon's table when they goal isn't wellbeing. Nightmarish

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#23

Post by keymone » Sat, Jun 22, 2019, 2:08 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #15

This is a textbook thought experiment in utilitarianism, carried to its logical conclusion. Kill one person, save eight. We might not like it, we might consider it abhorrent, it might contravene international human rights law, but we can't argue that it's senseless.

Right, but is utilitarianism not senseless? Maximum happiness for majority of population is free heroin distributed and administered by state.

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#24

Post by wsxcde » Sat, Jun 22, 2019, 2:09 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #15

This is a textbook thought experiment in utilitarianism, carried to its logical conclusion. Kill one person, save eight. We might not like it, we might consider it abhorrent, it might contravene international human rights law, but we can't argue that it's senseless.

What you're leaving out is that the one person being killed is not picked randomly from the citizen pool, they are all persecuted minorities. So, a more accurate statement would be that China is murdering one person from a group the communist party doesn't like to save eight from the ethnic group that constitutes the overwhelming majority of the ruling class.

That is not utilitarianism, it's just tribalism and xenophobia.

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#25

Post by everybodyknows » Sat, Jun 22, 2019, 2:09 PM UTC

A friend who traveled widely in China back in the '80s described a busy cornea transplant trade around the prisons in outlying areas. Wait times were typically one day. One day.

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#26

Post by optimalsolver » Sat, Jun 22, 2019, 2:10 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #15

This is a textbook thought experiment in utilitarianism, carried to its logical conclusion. Kill one person, save eight. We might not like it, we might consider it abhorrent, it might contravene international human rights law, but we can't argue that it's senseless.

Exactly. It's much easier for people to reason about utilitarian ethics when it involves ridiculously unrealistic scenarios like the trolley problem.

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#27

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Jun 22, 2019, 2:10 PM UTC

bayesian_horse wrote: post #11

I have read about the possibility of large-scale harvesting of organs from prisoners for a few months now. First thing to note about this particular article is that "The China Tribunal" has no formal or legal standing, it is basically a volunteer organization trying to collect evidence. When they say "Worst Fears [...] Were Just confirmed" they are at best misleading. There has been a notable dearth of reporting by t…

The Chinese government itself has admitted that this was done in the past but they promised to no longer allow it to happen...on multiple occasions. That China did this isn’t really in doubt, the argument is only about whether they still do it.

The central government has a hard time getting rid of this practice because they aren’t as omnipotent as they appear, there is a lot of vested interests that localities continue the practice.

Given the very low percentage of organ donors in Chinese culture, you’ll know they’ve stopped harvesting organs when their turn around time for organ transplants goes up by a lot.

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#28

Post by brainless » Sat, Jun 22, 2019, 2:10 PM UTC

1984 is being played out inside this country if this is true. The horror is beyond imagination since this seems state directed/aided.

My only hope is this news spreads like wildfire within its boundaries and citizens of China wake up.

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#29

Post by hydrox24 » Sat, Jun 22, 2019, 2:11 PM UTC

The report this is referencing is available here[0]

The tribunal was setup, for what it is worth, by a campaign group called: "International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China"[1]

[0]: https://chinatribunal.com/final-judgement-report/

[1]: https://endtransplantabuse.org/

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#30

Post by simion314 » Sat, Jun 22, 2019, 2:11 PM UTC

HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #3

While stopping short of concluding that the killing and forced organ removal of these peoples constitutes genocide in its legal definition (due to a lack of proof of actual intent to commit genocide), the panel nonetheless condemned the forced organ removals as a crime against humanity and an act of "unmatched wickedness". This article made me shiver. How did China get away with this for so long?

>How did China get away with this for so long?

You can't touch big countries, US, China, Russia can do whatever they want, who will dare to start something?

You can get away with shit as a small country to as long as a big country has no economic or military interest in your area, we all notice that all recent wars are fought in areas of strategic importance even if genocides happen in other areas too.