The US is not far from China's organ trafficking processes - that is - the process of harvesting human organs from a live patient. China has admitted to the harvesting of organs from condemned prisoners, which accounts for two-thirds of their transplants. But these are simply not condemned prisoners who are non-voluntarily having their organs harvested immediately following their execution.
Investigative journalist Ethan Gutmann of the Weekly Standard interviewed several Uighur refugees, who had actually witnessed the process of prisoner organ transplantation. The Uighur ethnic minority lives in Xinjiang, the vast Western province of China. They are actually Turkic Muslims, a few of which have even joined terrorist groups. "When it comes to the first organ harvesting of political prisoners, Xinjiang was ground zero," says Gutmann.
What these Uigher refugees told Gutmann, is unbelievably horrific! First of all, the prisoners were not necessarily all condemned men, but simply political prisoners - some of whom were young men who had been arrested for merely participating in political demonstrations.
The process reported was as follows: prisoners are injected with an anticoagulant, after which they are dispatched with a bullet to the right side of the chest. This renders them unconscious while still remaining alive. The organs are then quickly removed, without anesthetic to ensure freshness; and immediately transplanted to patients, who appear to be mostly Communist Party officials. Some of approximately 65,000 prisoners had their hearts harvested, while they were still beating, even before the 20008 Olympics!
Getting back to the US. The United Network for Organ Sharing is a non-profit organization that coordinates organ donation under a contract with the federal government, has proposed a change in the guidelines governing donation after cardiac death or DCD. These donations are increasing yearly.
When organ donation was first proposed, the only criteria was brain-death. Now, some years later, we've raised that bar by including people who are not brain-dead, but "may" die ... determined by who?
In the new guidelines, the requirement that "before evaluating a patient whose heart is still beating, for organ donation based on donation by cardiac-death criteria, the hospital's primary healthcare team and the legal next of kin, must have decided to withdraw ventilator support, or other life sustaining treatment, and that decision must be documented in the patient's chart, has been stricken."
A new sentence has been added, "A patient with end-stage muscularskeletal disease, pulmonary disease or upper spinal cord injury, may also be a suitable donation by cardiac-death candidate. What? This means that ALS patients plus other neurological disorders could become candidates for organ donation based on donation by cardiac-death. So what's the big deal? If the heart stops, isn't the patient dead anyway?
Let's explain: In 1997, the National Academy of Sciences said, a donation by Cardiac death or DCD, was ethical, as long as "tight" rules were followed. The decision to withdraw care must be independent of the decision to donate organs; and before removing any organs, surgeons must wait at least 5 minutes after the heart stops, to make sure it doesn't start to beat again.
The new donation by cardiac-death criteria involves, surgeons taking organs within moments of respirators and other forms of life-support being cut off from patients, who still have brain activity. In the relentless quest to get more organs, some hospitals began cutting the "waiting time" that the existing guidelines permitted. Some of them only waiting 75 seconds before taking hearts from brain damaged newborn babies. The rule revision also renames the procedure again, calling it "Donation after circulatory death". That terminology is more accurate because the heart may not necessarily be dead before death is declared ---- a different caliber of bullet to dispatch the patient.
Investigative journalist Ethan Gutmann of the Weekly Standard interviewed several Uighur refugees, who had actually witnessed the process of prisoner organ transplantation. The Uighur ethnic minority lives in Xinjiang, the vast Western province of China. They are actually Turkic Muslims, a few of which have even joined terrorist groups. "When it comes to the first organ harvesting of political prisoners, Xinjiang was ground zero," says Gutmann.
What these Uigher refugees told Gutmann, is unbelievably horrific! First of all, the prisoners were not necessarily all condemned men, but simply political prisoners - some of whom were young men who had been arrested for merely participating in political demonstrations.
The process reported was as follows: prisoners are injected with an anticoagulant, after which they are dispatched with a bullet to the right side of the chest. This renders them unconscious while still remaining alive. The organs are then quickly removed, without anesthetic to ensure freshness; and immediately transplanted to patients, who appear to be mostly Communist Party officials. Some of approximately 65,000 prisoners had their hearts harvested, while they were still beating, even before the 20008 Olympics!
Getting back to the US. The United Network for Organ Sharing is a non-profit organization that coordinates organ donation under a contract with the federal government, has proposed a change in the guidelines governing donation after cardiac death or DCD. These donations are increasing yearly.
When organ donation was first proposed, the only criteria was brain-death. Now, some years later, we've raised that bar by including people who are not brain-dead, but "may" die ... determined by who?
In the new guidelines, the requirement that "before evaluating a patient whose heart is still beating, for organ donation based on donation by cardiac-death criteria, the hospital's primary healthcare team and the legal next of kin, must have decided to withdraw ventilator support, or other life sustaining treatment, and that decision must be documented in the patient's chart, has been stricken."
A new sentence has been added, "A patient with end-stage muscularskeletal disease, pulmonary disease or upper spinal cord injury, may also be a suitable donation by cardiac-death candidate. What? This means that ALS patients plus other neurological disorders could become candidates for organ donation based on donation by cardiac-death. So what's the big deal? If the heart stops, isn't the patient dead anyway?
Let's explain: In 1997, the National Academy of Sciences said, a donation by Cardiac death or DCD, was ethical, as long as "tight" rules were followed. The decision to withdraw care must be independent of the decision to donate organs; and before removing any organs, surgeons must wait at least 5 minutes after the heart stops, to make sure it doesn't start to beat again.
The new donation by cardiac-death criteria involves, surgeons taking organs within moments of respirators and other forms of life-support being cut off from patients, who still have brain activity. In the relentless quest to get more organs, some hospitals began cutting the "waiting time" that the existing guidelines permitted. Some of them only waiting 75 seconds before taking hearts from brain damaged newborn babies. The rule revision also renames the procedure again, calling it "Donation after circulatory death". That terminology is more accurate because the heart may not necessarily be dead before death is declared ---- a different caliber of bullet to dispatch the patient.
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