Report on forced organ harvesting in China • Hacker News Board

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#71

Post by LocalH » Sat, Jun 22, 2019, 2:25 PM UTC

monkeyodeath wrote: post #59

LocalH wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why this is being downvoted. It may be a macabre way of looking at it, but it is a valid viewpoint. Poster didn't specify whether they actually felt that way. I agree, in the following sense. A different way to put it - if human rights are to be violated, there better be a damn noble reason for it.

It's a point of view that makes no sense. Murdering one person to save another is not "noble". It negates the entire point of "human rights" in the first place. You might as well suggest that people who need organs should be able to kill a random person on the street to get them.

I think the OP was merely opining that they'd rather see this, than people dying for pure profit motive. I know that, were I provided a choice between killing someone for forced organ donation that could potentially save lives, versus killing someone for greed, profit, or punishment, with no way to say "no", I'd choose the former. Making it clear, however, that I'd rather never have to make that choice in the first place.

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#72

Post by sam_lowry_ » Sat, Jun 22, 2019, 2:27 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #56

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some countries implement an opt-out system. If you do not want your body to be reused after you die, you have to declare it in advance. This is hugely beneficial for patients. Now, even this hugely emotional article does not talk about murder.

It’s one thing to harvest organs if the patient dies of accidents/natural causes, and personally I am in favour of the opt-out system. It’s a whole other thing of killing the patient on purpose to harvest their organs.

At least several thousand people are executed in China annually. Can their bodies be used?

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#73

Post by abricot » Sat, Jun 22, 2019, 2:27 PM UTC

throwaway619 wrote: post #51

This is a controversial subject. It is important to get information from sources that have rigorous fact-checking and a reputation to defend.

So, lets err on the side of genocide?

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#74

Post by xenocyon » Sat, Jun 22, 2019, 2:28 PM UTC

jtdev wrote: post #12

A hard line stance on China’s human rights abuses, currency and trade manipulation, and intellectual property theft will be a top requirement for my support of 2020 US presidential candidates.

It's weird to speak of literal organ harvesting and the legal fiction (admittedly, an arguably useful fiction) of intellectual "property" in the same sentence. One of these things is not like the other.

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#75

Post by arkitaip » Sat, Jun 22, 2019, 2:28 PM UTC

LocalH wrote: post #53

monkeyodeath wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that it makes a moral difference, but the victims aren't all hardened criminals. They are political dissidents, people who follow the wrong religion, and racial minorities. Most of the greatest mass atrocities in world history have been framed as a "tradeoff". Destroying some lives to save others isn't a functioning society, it's a living nightmare.

Honestly, if we were even going to begin to entertain any notions even slightly related to this, I'd want to suggest that if we insist on having the death penalty as a punishment, then those who are put to death should, if suitable, become automatic organ donors.

Absolutely not. If anything their bodies should be protected from any kind of harvesting as to not incentivize the state from handing out death penalties.

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#76

Post by Nextgrid » Sat, Jun 22, 2019, 2:29 PM UTC

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #72

Nextgrid wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s one thing to harvest organs if the patient dies of accidents/natural causes, and personally I am in favour of the opt-out system. It’s a whole other thing of killing the patient on purpose to harvest their organs.

At least several thousand people are executed in China annually. Can their bodies be used?

Wouldn’t it be worth investigating why they are executed? Given this organ trade is going on I wouldn’t be surprised if their “justice” system is being literally trigger-happy because they benefit from the resulting organs being made available.

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#77

Post by ilikehurdles » Sat, Jun 22, 2019, 2:29 PM UTC

stavros wrote: post #21

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…

Your premise is false, we don’t consider it ethical for the state to execute prisoners.

I’m glad you’re lucky enough to be born in the right place, with the right ethnicity, family name, and religious beliefs. Imagine if you were unlucky enough to get one of those things wrong, and be born to be imprisoned, tortured, and taken apart to be sold for scraps by China.

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#78

Post by krn » Sat, Jun 22, 2019, 2:29 PM UTC

rdl wrote: post #35

There is something brilliant about using a group of people who intentionally keep their organs in the best possible condition (Falun Gong does exercise, avoids alcohol, smoking, and some foods, etc.) as your oppressed-minority-live-organ-banks. OTOH, I think the only reason they were hated was due to being popular and somehow offending or scaring someone in power. They were tolerated or even supported for a long time…

> I think the only reason they were hated was due to being popular and somehow offending or scaring someone in power.

The idea of not being the highest authority to the people is the scariest thing to any authoritarian power.

That's why they are closing churches, jailing pastors, and rewriting scripture in China as Christianity’s popularity grows[1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/13/china-christia...

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#79

Post by jdietrich » Sat, Jun 22, 2019, 2:29 PM UTC

wsxcde wrote: post #24

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 xenoph…

Is it completely implausible to believe that people from "a group the communist party doesn't like" are simply less useful to Chinese society than a randomly selected citizen?

I'm not trying to defend China here, but it's futile to condemn an action if you have not made a good-faith effort to understand the rationale. China is a collectivist society - the rights of the individual are always secondary to the rights of the whole. We believe that people have a fundamental right to cause trouble, even if that's detrimental to social order; the Chinese Communist Party don't and a substantial proportion of their population agree wholeheartedly.

Saying "the Chinese shouldn't do this because it contravenes human rights" is like them saying "the First Amendment is terrible because it undermines social cohesion". It's an argument that seems nonsensical or in bad faith, because it's grounded in a completely alien conceptualisation of the role of the state and the rights of the individual.

If you want to make a persuasive argument, you need to address that core ideological difference. Why is your right to freedom of religion more valuable than our collective right to freedom from religious conflict? Why is your right to free speech more valuable than our collective right to social cohesion and stable governance? Why is your right to life more valuable than the right to life of the eight people who your organs could save?

Answering those questions is difficult and uncomfortable, but it's fundamentally necessary if you actually want to promote the values of liberal democracy rather than ineffectually condemning a different political culture.

Re: Report on forced organ harvesting in China

#80

Post by LocalH » Sat, Jun 22, 2019, 2:29 PM UTC

sdwa wrote: post #61

LocalH wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, if we were even going to begin to entertain any notions even slightly related to this, I'd want to suggest that if we insist on having the death penalty as a punishment, then those who are put to death should, if suitable, become automatic organ donors.

Nah that's totally ridiculous. Death is as serious a punishment as possible and can never be appealed once delivered, there should never be any incentives to deliver the death sentence besides seeing that justice is done.

Let me be clear that I'm not advocating for capital punishment at all, I'm staunchly against it. But honestly, if we're going to decide that we're allowed to kill people in the name of justice, it's arguable that the deceased's bodies should be used to help save lives.