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Nonconsenting prisoners are the source of many organ transplantations in China

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Re: Nonconsenting prisoners are the source of many organ transplantations in China

#21

Post by Darmody »

elmomle wrote: post #10

For anybody who thinks that prisoners perhaps deserve to have their organs harvested (a comment to that effect popped up and then promptly disappeared here), there are at least two things worth considering: 1. As is clearly stated in the article, this includes political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, such as (but not at all limited to) Falun Gong. 2. Even if the state had the best of intentions (and it clearl…

Once you can harvest organs from prisoners who committed outrageous crimes, the number of those prisoners will magically increase.

Re: Nonconsenting prisoners are the source of many organ transplantations in China

#22

Post by dragonwriter »

elmomle wrote: post #10

For anybody who thinks that prisoners perhaps deserve to have their organs harvested (a comment to that effect popped up and then promptly disappeared here), there are at least two things worth considering: 1. As is clearly stated in the article, this includes political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, such as (but not at all limited to) Falun Gong. 2. Even if the state had the best of intentions (and it clearl…

> Even if the state had the best of intentions (and it clearly doesn't), this creates a very perverse and dangerous set of incentives, wherein the state materially benefits from treating prisoners as less-than-human.

Yeah, this is like the incentive problem with prison labor (and the 13th Amendment loophole) in the US, except that it creates an incentive for mass killing rather than mass long-term incarceration.

Re: Nonconsenting prisoners are the source of many organ transplantations in China

#23

Post by foobiekr »

Darmody wrote: post #21
elmomle wrote: post #10

For anybody who thinks that prisoners perhaps deserve to have their organs harvested (a comment to that effect popped up and then promptly disappeared here), there are at least two things worth considering: 1. As is clearly stated in the article, this includes political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, such as (but not at all limited to) Falun Gong. 2. Even if the state had the best of intentions (and it clearl…

Once you can harvest organs from prisoners who committed outrageous crimes, the number of those prisoners will magically increase.

“Be the match”-like programs would be ill advised if you are a rare match due to the risk of powerful political actors using imprisonment to extract from you.

Nice dystopia.

Re: Nonconsenting prisoners are the source of many organ transplantations in China

#24

Post by masterof0 »

siva7 wrote: post #15
masterof0 wrote: post #8

I have a few questions on this: - If the family of the prisoner consents, then would it be ok? - If they are going to do it anyway.Wouldn't be better that they share the research with the world? I understand that it has to do with human dignity and rights, etc. But I always assumed that here in the US you get your organs taken off(I'm aware of the mark on the DL) anyway, when you die in an accident, etc. Do the famil…

No, it wouldn't be OK by international governing standards. Ethical Rules are very strict and explicit prisoner "consent" is one of these areas. The other thing is that the donor numbers china is presenting to the medical community don't make statistically much sense except if you have a huge population of non-consenting prisoners. Which is also the reason why china is banned from many international donor programs.

yeah, makes sense.

Re: Nonconsenting prisoners are the source of many organ transplantations in China

#25

Post by masterof0 »

nerdwaller wrote: post #19
masterof0 wrote: post #8

I have a few questions on this: - If the family of the prisoner consents, then would it be ok? - If they are going to do it anyway.Wouldn't be better that they share the research with the world? I understand that it has to do with human dignity and rights, etc. But I always assumed that here in the US you get your organs taken off(I'm aware of the mark on the DL) anyway, when you die in an accident, etc. Do the famil…

> If they are going to do it anyway. Wouldn't be better that they share the research with the world? There’s precedent already that these types of things are inhumane and the data shouldn’t be used strictly based on the ethics of it. One example includes experiments done by Nazi Germany in the 1940s[0]. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation

I see, makes sense, I knew about the experiments conducted by Germans in the concentration camps, I thought we brought them home afterwards. I understand.

Re: Nonconsenting prisoners are the source of many organ transplantations in China

#26

Post by masterof0 »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #17
masterof0 wrote: post #8

I have a few questions on this: - If the family of the prisoner consents, then would it be ok? - If they are going to do it anyway.Wouldn't be better that they share the research with the world? I understand that it has to do with human dignity and rights, etc. But I always assumed that here in the US you get your organs taken off(I'm aware of the mark on the DL) anyway, when you die in an accident, etc. Do the famil…

From what I remember from Human Subjects training in my grad school days, the prison environment is considered to be so coercive that it pretty much makes "informed consent" unobtainable. While some studies are still done on prisoners, the bar to getting such a study approved is very high (or at least, is supposed to be very high). There have been indeed cases where organs were harvested without permission (not just…

Yeah, I was just wondering if hospitals actually have a way of getting away with this, as families never check for their loved ones body.

Re: Nonconsenting prisoners are the source of many organ transplantations in China

#27

Post by simorley »

So the definition of "nonconsenting prisoners" is "killing a person without their consent...". That makes every organ transplantation of prisoners "nonconsenting" since nobody consents to their own execution. It doesn't mean the prisoners did or did not consent to donating their organs. It just says they didn't consent to be executed.

I'm against any and all organ donation. So I don't support taking the organs of prisoners. But the author's problem here isn't with organ donations but with the death penalty. He's not saying that the prisoners or their families didn't donate their organs, he's saying prisoners cannot consent because they are prisoners.

The article also said that singapore and taiwan used to allow prisoner's organ donations until their were "bullied" into dropping the practice. So it seems like it is a cultural issue. If the chinese want to allow prisoners to donate their organs, who are we to say otherwise. We use aborted fetuses for medical experiments. Should china be allowed to force us to stop such behavior? Not to mention medical testing on poor people in africa, india, etc.

Is it any better to take organs from poor and desperate people? Use poor people for medical experiments?

Re: Nonconsenting prisoners are the source of many organ transplantations in China

#28

Post by detaro »

simorley wrote: post #27

So the definition of "nonconsenting prisoners" is "killing a person without their consent...". That makes every organ transplantation of prisoners "nonconsenting" since nobody consents to their own execution. It doesn't mean the prisoners did or did not consent to donating their organs. It just says they didn't consent to be executed. I'm against any and all organ donation. So I don't support taking the organs of pri…

That's clearly not the definition the article uses, given that it at length discusses evidence that refused consent to organ use is ignored and how that's a problem with trusting Chinese claims to the contrary.

Re: Nonconsenting prisoners are the source of many organ transplantations in China

#29

Post by siva7 »

simorley wrote: post #27

So the definition of "nonconsenting prisoners" is "killing a person without their consent...". That makes every organ transplantation of prisoners "nonconsenting" since nobody consents to their own execution. It doesn't mean the prisoners did or did not consent to donating their organs. It just says they didn't consent to be executed. I'm against any and all organ donation. So I don't support taking the organs of pri…

I'm not sure if you are "joking" or not aware of history, but here is some reading to answer your question why we don't do this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation

Re: Nonconsenting prisoners are the source of many organ transplantations in China

#30

Post by simorley »

siva7 wrote: post #29
simorley wrote: post #27

So the definition of "nonconsenting prisoners" is "killing a person without their consent...". That makes every organ transplantation of prisoners "nonconsenting" since nobody consents to their own execution. It doesn't mean the prisoners did or did not consent to donating their organs. It just says they didn't consent to be executed. I'm against any and all organ donation. So I don't support taking the organs of pri…

I'm not sure if you are "joking" or not aware of history, but here is some reading to answer your question why we don't do this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation

The nazis didn't invent human experimentation.

Human experimentation happened in the US before the nazis.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/cruel-medica...

Also, we created the largest human experimentat during ww2 - hiroshima and nagasai which was used to test the short-term and long-term effects of radiation on a large sample size.

On aborigines before the nazis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...

On native canadians before the nazis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...

The pioneers of unethical human experimentation was the US and Britain. Germany came fairly late to the game. And unethical human experimentation continued long after ww2. You can look those up yourself.

Funny how we always have to look to the nazis for evil when all we have to do is look in the mirror. Nevermind we recruited nazi scientists to work in our institutions after ww2.

https://www.npr.org/2014/11/05/361427276/how-thousands-of-na...

So I don't think your assertion is true.

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