I saw a program in National Geographic which deeply disturbed me. The segment centered around organ transplantation. This is the process whereby body parts of vital importance towards many human functions are donated to people who need those parts, primarily people whose human organs have become badly damaged due to personal lifestyle or from a compendium of health problems. This in itself seems to be innocent and even quite beneficial towards the propagation and continuum of human life.
What is immensely baffling is the circumstance surrounding these processes. There was one example during the program where an American guy flew to Shanghai, China because he felt the chances he had for finding a new liver there was higher and faster considering he was on a very long waiting list if he had to stay in the United States for an organ donation. In only a span of two weeks he underwent the surgery to acquire the new body part and after several days or a week or so, he was ready to go back to the States, recovering from a successful operation.
This in itself sounds like a medical miracle or a personal success story for any individual at end's wit over the health of his body. But the program takes on an interesting perspective. The doctors based in the States began to ask if there was something the hospitals in China had an advantage at compared to the medical institutions in the States because of the speed with which the patient was able to acquire a healthy organ at so fast a time. The chilling answer to the story was given by a faceless man. He was once a doctor who worked in China but has since emigrated to a European country. Faceless because the man refused to be photographed, or videoed and in addition to that he wore a mask all throughout the interview. His account was terrifying. Because China executed thousands of political prisoners as well as many convicts who crossed the line of the law each year, the government began to find a way to harvest the healthy organs of these individuals in a lucrative trade that will eventually benefit the national treasury. Nurses, doctors, whole medical teams waited on standby during an execution session in some nameless Chinese state. The man said that neither the prisoners nor their relatives had given consent to their body parts being reused on other ailing human beings. This was a breach of human rights in titanic proportions. No wonder, the man is not practicing medicine anymore, lives like a hermit for fear of exposure and retaliation, and has nightmares about the heinous acts he has taken part in. His last message was he was a man of medicine and was supposed to save lives. He could not fathom why he was helping in the butchery of human beings.
We both know the common rule of business. Supply SHOULD increase proportionally with demand. Because more and more people are at one point or another in their lives needing medical aid through the use of body part transplants, then the medical world is scurrying to feed this need mostly because of the lucrative nature of these transactions. People will pay a huge sum to save the lives of the people they love but shouldn't there be a consideration to the ones who are on the other end of the spectrum? The donors, especially the unsuspecting ones? Those who are the victims of this illegal trade, those who do not have a choice? The illegality of how many of these human butcher products are procured makes the whole phenomena inhuman, monstrous and very immoral.
The only thing I can say about this is monitoring of the strictest and highest order has to be done. Due process has to take place before an organ is sold and donated. Individuals at the highest echelon with enough influence and punch as well as people in the lower rung of the ladder should set aside their own selfish motivations to do what they can to aid this fight. This is a fight to give due respect and reverence to the human body from birth until its demise. Given our own choices, we, even down to our graves, deserve the peace literally we have so owed ourselves for a long time. Our destination is six feet under the face of the earth not some horrible bunsen burner or test tube in a clinical facility to be inserted into an individual we did not choose to share a part of our bodies to...
What is immensely baffling is the circumstance surrounding these processes. There was one example during the program where an American guy flew to Shanghai, China because he felt the chances he had for finding a new liver there was higher and faster considering he was on a very long waiting list if he had to stay in the United States for an organ donation. In only a span of two weeks he underwent the surgery to acquire the new body part and after several days or a week or so, he was ready to go back to the States, recovering from a successful operation.
This in itself sounds like a medical miracle or a personal success story for any individual at end's wit over the health of his body. But the program takes on an interesting perspective. The doctors based in the States began to ask if there was something the hospitals in China had an advantage at compared to the medical institutions in the States because of the speed with which the patient was able to acquire a healthy organ at so fast a time. The chilling answer to the story was given by a faceless man. He was once a doctor who worked in China but has since emigrated to a European country. Faceless because the man refused to be photographed, or videoed and in addition to that he wore a mask all throughout the interview. His account was terrifying. Because China executed thousands of political prisoners as well as many convicts who crossed the line of the law each year, the government began to find a way to harvest the healthy organs of these individuals in a lucrative trade that will eventually benefit the national treasury. Nurses, doctors, whole medical teams waited on standby during an execution session in some nameless Chinese state. The man said that neither the prisoners nor their relatives had given consent to their body parts being reused on other ailing human beings. This was a breach of human rights in titanic proportions. No wonder, the man is not practicing medicine anymore, lives like a hermit for fear of exposure and retaliation, and has nightmares about the heinous acts he has taken part in. His last message was he was a man of medicine and was supposed to save lives. He could not fathom why he was helping in the butchery of human beings.
We both know the common rule of business. Supply SHOULD increase proportionally with demand. Because more and more people are at one point or another in their lives needing medical aid through the use of body part transplants, then the medical world is scurrying to feed this need mostly because of the lucrative nature of these transactions. People will pay a huge sum to save the lives of the people they love but shouldn't there be a consideration to the ones who are on the other end of the spectrum? The donors, especially the unsuspecting ones? Those who are the victims of this illegal trade, those who do not have a choice? The illegality of how many of these human butcher products are procured makes the whole phenomena inhuman, monstrous and very immoral.
The only thing I can say about this is monitoring of the strictest and highest order has to be done. Due process has to take place before an organ is sold and donated. Individuals at the highest echelon with enough influence and punch as well as people in the lower rung of the ladder should set aside their own selfish motivations to do what they can to aid this fight. This is a fight to give due respect and reverence to the human body from birth until its demise. Given our own choices, we, even down to our graves, deserve the peace literally we have so owed ourselves for a long time. Our destination is six feet under the face of the earth not some horrible bunsen burner or test tube in a clinical facility to be inserted into an individual we did not choose to share a part of our bodies to...
