China to phase out use of prisoners' organs for transplants

[frigidmagi]

Yahoo

China will start phasing out its decades-long practice of using the organs of executed prisoners for transplant operations from November, a senior official said on Thursday, as it pushes to mandate the use of organs from ethical sources in hospitals.

China remains the only country in the world that still systematically uses organs extracted from executed prisoners in transplant operations, a practice that has drawn widespread international criticism. Many Chinese view the practice as a way for criminals to redeem themselves.

But officials have recently spoken out against the practice of harvesting organs from dead inmates, saying it "tarnishes the image of China".

The health ministry will begin enforcing the use of organs from voluntary donors allocated through a fledging national program at a meeting set to be held in November, former deputy health minister Huang Jiefu, who still heads the ministry's organ transplant office, told Reuters.

"I am confident that before long all accredited hospitals will forfeit the use of prisoner organs," Huang said.

The first batch of all 165 Chinese hospitals licensed for transplants will promise to stop using organs harvested from death row inmates at the November meeting, he added. Huang did not specify the exact number.

MEETING "ACCEPTED ETHICAL STANDARDS"

An Australian-trained liver transplant surgeon, Huang said the China Organ Transplant Committee will ensure that the "source of the organs for transplantation must meet the commonly accepted ethical standards in the world".

That effectively means the use of prisoner organs at approved hospitals will come to an end, but the timeframe remains indefinite, he added.

China has launched pilot volunteer organ donor programs in 25 provinces and municipalities with the aim of creating a nationwide voluntary scheme by the end of 2013.

By the end of 2012, about 64 percent of transplanted organs in China came from executed prisoners and the number has dipped to under 54 percent so far this year, according to figures provided by Huang.

At a meeting in August last year, Huang, deputy health minister at the time, told officials that top leaders had decided to reduce dependency on prisoners' organs, according to a transcript of the meeting obtained by Reuters.

Rights groups say many organs are taken from prisoners without their consent or their family's knowledge, something the government denies.

So far, more than 1,000 organ donors have come through the new system, benefiting at least 3,000 patients, Huang said.

Voluntary organ donation in China has already risen from 63 cases in all of 2010 to a current average of 130 per month so far this year, Huang added.

However, not all donated organs are currently allocated through the new program, leaving room for human interference, one of the main challenges the reform faces.

Supply still falls far short of demand due in part to the traditional Chinese belief that bodies should be buried or cremated intact. An estimated 300,000 patients are waitlisted every year for organ transplants and only about one in 30 ultimately will receive a transplant.

The shortage has driven a trade in illegal organ trafficking and in 2007 the government banned organ transplants from living donors, except spouses, blood relatives and step or adopted family members.

Good start.

[Lys]

Why is this a good thing? The executed prisoners aren't using their organs any more, someone else could. Seems like a waste to just dump perfectly functional organs.

[General Havoc]

Because China sells those organs for profit on the world market, the demand for which is so high that they have a history of simply executing anyone who winds up in their justice system that they believe won't be missed, so that they can make more money.

And incidentally, this is not China giving up the practice. This is China giving up admitting to the practice.

[Lys]

Okay, that they sell them for absurdly high profits was vital piece of information. That screws up the incentives and makes them go really bad places and results in... well them executing anyone they believe won't be missed, as you said.

[General Havoc]

Bear in mind, I'm quite strongly on record as being pro-death penalty, and even I think China's system is a rampant font of abuse and atrocity. That takes some doing.

[Lys]

Pro-death penalty too here, but if i recall your position correctly, not as strongly as you. To me the point of the justice system is to primarily to maintain social order - that is prevent vigilantism and blood feuding - and secondarily to reform people. Therefore i only wish to apply it to those deemed unreformable, which is mostly serial killers and those who kill in prison. That is, those who kill in prison given a prison system that is built with reformation in mind. In the present US prison system, most prison murders are an extension of gang-fighting, and i'm opposed to applying the death penalty to soldiers fighting a war simply because they and their opponents are not recognized political entities.

[Josh]

Pro death-penalty myself, with the caveat that the standards need to be damned high for enforcement. I'm not happy with the way the system works at present. Other than that, I tend to lean toward Lys' view of things.

As for the Chinese system, the problems are those that naturally occur when you tie law enforcement to profit motives. It's almost impossible to avoid institutional corruption where that happens.

[Lys]

As for the Chinese system, the problems are those that naturally occur when you tie law enforcement to profit motives. It's almost impossible to avoid institutional corruption where that happens.

Yeah, that's inherently bad. The US has some of that problem too, but thankfully not tied to the capital punishment. Mostly it's this abomination of an law-enforcement-industrial complex involving private prisons, the war of drugs, and some other things. It's to the point that guards from said private prisons have on occasion taken it upon themselves to run drug busts merely to boosts their inmate populations and thus profits.

[Batman]

The problem with the death penalty is that the people deciding whether or not it should be administered are humans, and humans make mistakes, are greedy, and essentially care mostly about themselves. I theoretically approve of the death penalty if and when appropriate. There's zero repeat offenders amongst the dead and yes, there are a lot of people who simply can't be reformed even if you actually try.
You give me a system that actually does that and I'm all for it. What we have is messes like the US system, which essentially costs more money on repeated appeals than a simple 'Oh what the hell, life without parole' would have been, religious idiots who kill people for not abiding by their version of Harry Potter or the Chinese who shoot people for profit.

[General Havoc]

This is not the context to get into a debate about the merits of the death penalty, merits I have argued at length in other threads.

[Batman]

Funny. Here I thought we have been discussing the merits(or lack thereof) of the death penalty for quite some posts.

[General Havoc]

Funny. Here I thought we have been discussing the merits(or lack thereof) of the death penalty for quite some posts.

Which is irrelevant to what I said. I've made the pro-death penalty case before, on these boards. I do not have time to make it again here. And nothing about my position thereon is relevant to a system wherein people are killed to sell their organs at profit.

[Lys]

Batman, is there anyone in this thread even intimating a defence for the US capital punishment system as presently implemented? Because Havoc didn't say anything one way or the other, i said that the system needed reforming, and Josh agreed. Who exactly are you arguing against here?