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:<p>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.<p>2. 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.
Back in med school one of my professors, chinese origin, held a seminar about his research how china uses non-consenting prisoners to harvest organs. Since then i lost a bit of faith in humanity.
It is my understanding that US prisoners are not able to donate blood. The prison population is considered to have too high a level of drug use and other red flags to be a safe source for blood donation. So even if we set aside the entire human rights/consent issue, this seems like a dangerous medical practice for those <i>receiving</i> the organs.
It’s interesting how scientific journals are emerging as a source of information and ethical discussion (as they were originally) after being seen as transcripts of any scientifically relevant observation with a p-value below .05<p>More interesting is the tone of that article: not discussing, or looking at arguments but plainly stating that a crime is being committed at scale and condemning it the clearest way it can: publishing detailed evidence and stating a new editorial policy. The editorial policy feels strangely inadequate to the for-profit genocide that they describe but that’s the extend of the authority of the committee.
Personally, I think that the ethical aspects of harvesting organs from people sentenced to death are open to discussion.<p>If society finds it acceptable to put people to death for a number of serious crimes then it may also be felt acceptable to 'get some good out of it' by saving others' lives.<p>In any case, one aspect is that this may provide an incentive to sentence people to death because organs are needed...
I wonder if western media will bash communist china for this egregious behavior<p>From a collectivist point of view it makes total sense to overrule the individual rights not to donate organs for the "greater good"
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Is it any better to take organs from poor and desperate people? Use poor people for medical experiments?
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?<p>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 family of the deceased checks the body to make sure all the organs are there? Just asking, I don't know a lot about ethics related to medicine.