Monday, July 10, 2006

Morality of Canadians Travelling to China for Organ Transplants

The idea of Canadians travelling to China and paying money for organ transplants is very worrying. It is obviously critical that the origin of the "replacement parts" should be clear and verifiable, but this has not been the case in China to date, although national legislation is being put into place that is intended to address this. I speculate that some of these for-sale human organs may come from deceased patients whose families could not pay hospital bills or from the large number of people sentenced to death (probably a much larger number than Amnesty can verify). Insofar as the allegation that most of the organs being sold for transplant into seriously ill foreigners come from Falun Gong practitioners goes, it seems hard to imagine that being an unrepentant Falun Gong practitioner could be a capital offence in China, but the allegation is impossible to disprove with absolute certainty. In any event, if the donor and family is not freely willing then the transplant is wrong.

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