Nuke's

Remember John Prine’s Please Don’t bury Me?

“Give my stomach to Milwaukee if they run out of beer
Put my sox in a cedar box just get ‘em out of here
Venus De Milo can have my arms, look out, I’ve got your nose
Sell my heart to the junkman and give my love to Rose.”

Maybe I’ve just got a twisted sense of humor, but that’s what I thought about when I read this article about the often-rumored and now-admitted organ harvesting from condemned prisoners in China.

BEIJING — After years of denial, China has acknowledged that many of the human organs used in transplants here are taken from executed prisoners and that many of the recipients are foreigners who pay hefty sums to avoid a long wait.

Speaking at a conference of surgeons in the southern city of Guangzhou, Deputy Health Minister Huang Jiefu called for a strict code of conduct and better record-keeping to stem China’s thriving illegal organ trade, state media reported.

“Apart from a small portion of traffic victims, most of the organs from cadavers are from executed prisoners,” said Huang, reported the English-language China Daily newspaper Thursday. “The current organ donation shortfall can’t meet demand.”

Acknowledgment of what had been an open secret on the Internet, in local magazines and among people waiting for transplanted organs came weeks after China announced tighter oversight of death-penalty cases. Legal experts say requiring the country’s highest court to approve death sentences could reduce them by a third.

While China doesn’t disclose the number of people executed each year, Amnesty International reports that at least 1,770 people were put to death in 2005, based on Chinese media reports. Some activists say it could be as many as 10,000.

Kind of puts a whole knew spin on the song, I Left My Heart…..In San Francisco...

News source

Filed under: Communism/Socialism, News and politics