Banning Organ Sales in Free Countries Enables Harvesting Prisoners’ Organs In Unfree Ones
Two new films, one a documentary and one a drama based on the same facts, expose one of the most horrific markets operating today: Communist China’s selling of organs harvested from prisoners of conscience.
Ten thousand “transplant tourists” travel annually to communist China, where they pay top dollar to get organs transplanted on demand. The Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby summarizes how China became the go-to destination for desperate patients on waiting lists:
China was killing enormous numbers of imprisoned men and women by strapping them down to operating tables, still conscious, and forcibly extracting their organs — and then delivering those organs to the hospital transplant centers that have become a major source of revenue. Chinese officials claim that organs come from violent criminals on death row. But “Human Harvest” makes it clear that most of those killed are peaceful citizens persecuted for their beliefs: Tibetans, Uighurs, Christians — and, above all, practitioners of Falun Gong, a Buddhist-style spiritual movement of peaceful meditation and ethical commitment.
Free countries may not be able to stop this horrific practice, but they could reduce the demand for these organs by allowing free people to exercise the choice to sell their organs. Currently, free countries rely only on altruism, which has resulted in severe shortages of organs and black markets.
Sorry, but a country that bans organ sales is not a free country at all. Ditto a country that bans suicide.
Jimbino Brazil doesn’t have economic or personal freedoms as great as those seen in the United States.
Iran probably has been the most successful legal seller (I don’t know of any other country where the laws specifically permit such sales) of kidneys to other Iranian citizens. Are Iranians free?
Brazil, like Mexico, Cuba, Argentina and other Latin countries, is freer in many ways than the USSA. For example, I am free to buy common meds like metformin and mebandazole over the counter for mere pennies per pill. In the USSA, you are charged more and, worse, need to pay a doc to give you a prescription to buy the meds! And you can buy a beer and drink it while walking along the beach, something Amerikans can do only in Texas, as far as I know. And on the bus, which you can’t do even in Texas.
In those countries, you also aren’t required to pay a fortune to participate in their versions of Obamacare. You can go uninsured, as I do, and pay cash for treatment at less than half the Amerikan price and your network is almost infinite.
Furthermore, you can participate in their free market for sex and buy food or booze freely on the street at any time of day or night. You will almost never see a cop, much less be pulled over or shot by one for no reason, even if you’re Black, Hispanic or Native American!
Well, I hope the bus driver, at least, is not drinking beer.
Brazil’s limits on drinking while driving are stricter than those in the USSA, but I hope the next British PM who defends Britain from the Nazis can finish off a bottle of brandy before lunch. Or that the next leader of the Union Armies appreciates his whiskey.
“You will almost never see a cop, much less be pulled over or shot by one for no reason”
Jimbino, isn’t the murder rate in Brazil three times that of the murder rate in the US? (The US murder rate is rather high so three times the US murder rate is a big thing.)
The murder rate in Brazil is high, but who’s talking about the general murder rate? Brazil’s cops seem to deliberately kill for a reason; in Chicago you can easily get shot by a cop for no reason at all or maybe for driving while Black.
In Chicago it’s a crime to sell tacos from your taco truck that is parked near a restaurant. In Brazil, you can buy street food almost anywhere–in parks, sitting on a bus, in ubiquitous markets and sometimes even inside a restaurant. In Chicago, you can’t drink or even carry an open beer on the street; in Brazil you can.
In Chicago, you can get arrested for buying or selling sex. In Brazil, every decent-sized city has a neighborhood specializing in hookers and brothels and others full of “love motels.”
Which is freer?
Which country is freer?
Jimbino constantly praises the medical care in Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, etc. He makes it sound a lot better than the care we receive as benighted residents of “USSA”. Is Jimbino a reliable source? Let’s look at it.
Jimbino informs us that in Brazil, “You will almost never see a cop”. So les non temps roulez!! Or do they?
How then is the law is enforced in Brazil?
Jimbino adds “Brazil’s limits on drinking while driving are stricter than those in the USSA”. Rilly? So if your bus driver is drinking on the job, do you politely ask the driver to let you off so you can find a cop? Or maybe bus riders don’t mind, because, as Jimbino explains, “you can participate in their free market for sex and buy food or booze freely on the street at any time of day or night”. Maybe they don’t mind “stricter” laws if not enforced. And if most Brazilians like all of that just fine, they surely won’t like cops hanging around to spoil their fun.
Sounds like a paradise . . . except maybe it’s not as heavenly as Jimbino says. The New York Times reports this:
“The mayor-elect of Rio de Janeiro is promoting a new idea to bolster tourism in his crime-plagued city: levying a new tax on tourists, then using the proceeds to reimburse visitors who are mugged.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/world/americas/brazil-rio-de-janeiro-tourism-crime.html?_r=1
Visitors mugged? Not even Brazilians believe that only “visitors” are mugged. But there’s more, much more:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-18/british-olympic-athlete-robbed-gunpoint-officials-warn-curfew-say-rio-not-safe-envir
http://www.syracuse.com/olympics/index.ssf/2016/07/rio_olympics_china_issues_safety_warning_after_thefts_armed_robberies_of_athletes.html
None of this is even to suggest that there are no dangerous neighborhoods in US cities. I simply point out that Jimbino tends to associate rosy colors with Latin American countries and assigns dark shades to the US. No doubt, that same palette is used to color his medical care comparisons as well.
Jimbino, in Chicago the total number of fatal police-involved shootings 2010-2014 averaged 70 per year. A high number, yes, but not when the person shot had an illegal gun in the policeman’s face.
I think you better research some real numbers about America and your comparisons. Much of what you are saying here is pure rubbish. I realize that you find local laws about drinking alcohol and prostitution to not meet your tastes, but local laws are set up by local people that live in such environments. That too is part of democracy. I am sort of glad that drugs, alcohol and prostitution aren’t permitted in the public schools, but perhaps that is too much government interference for your taste.
[…] Oh, by the way, it’s worth noting that criminalization of organ sales doesn’t fully stop the practice. Other nations step in, often with policies that are disgusting. […]
The most “disgusting policy” is one that makes organ donation subject to “opt out” instead of “opt in.” Anyone who donates an organ when he has a family to support or bequeath his wealth to is an idiot. There needs to be a “minimum wage” for organ donation, else the donor is a slave to gummint.
[…] Oh, by the way, it’s worth noting that criminalization of organ sales doesn’t fully stop the practice. Other nations step in, often with policies that are disgusting. […]