A recent South Korean documentary which followed the Tianjin First Central Hospital, a popular destination for Korean transplant patients, has uncovered some truly grisly findings.
In the documentary, an undercover reporter poses as a prospective patient seeking transplantation and via use of a secret camera documents his interactions with hospital staff. The staff assures him a matching organ could be procured in only a few weeks’ time, assuming of course that he donate an additional $1500 to the hospital’s “charity.” This interaction begged the question, “Where, or better yet, who, are these fast-track organ donations coming from?”
Unfortunately, this research into China’s organ harvesting practices is hardly unprecedented. The Epoch Times had already conducted extensive research into the topic and determined many of the organs were coming from unwitting donors who died shortly thereafter from the procedure. These unfortunate victims are usually ‘prisoners of conscience,’ a title reserved for practitioners of different spiritual practices like Falun Gong which the Chinese government has banned and deemed punishable since the late 90s. According to reports, China’s Uyghur Muslim community as well as random kidnapping victims are also at significant risk of being targeted for these unethical, invasive and non-consensual practices.
The government, for its part, asserts that these organs come from executed prisoners, but even allowing for cadaver organs, the rate at which organ transplants are becoming readily available still doesn’t add up, especially since the rate of voluntary organ donation is not very high. The documentary additionally revealed a disturbing blueprint for a machine which is designed to elicit brain death in subjects without injuring any other organs but which is ostensibly referred to as a ‘Primary Brain Stem Injury Impacting Machine.’
The disturbing findings in the documentary all circles back to a system of complicity involving South Korean doctors who know where these organs were sourced, but refer their patients regardless as well as a totally inhumane, money-driven organ harvesting practice that sustains itself through its continued violations against unwilling donors and gets by thanks to a lack of transparency.
It shows that there are certain lines which should never be crossed, even by the desperate. Kidney transplants can be a great life-saving measure, but not when that life comes at the cost of someone else’s.
