Irreversible, Imprudent Choices

 China, cognizant of its international reputation as a country that has been proven to remove body parts for transplantation from prisoners accused of capital crimes and facing the death penalty, has decided to clean up its image a little, initiating a stab at passing new laws making some crimes less susceptible to the death penalty.

Of course that would be a vast improvement; anything that might provide for fewer executions would help.  China remains the country with the largest numbers of state-imposed executions as punishment for various types of criminal behaviour.  On the other hand it is also the most populous country in the world.

China is also accused by those who have done some very interesting research, of being complicit with the removal of organs from Falun Gong adherents who are persecuted for their beliefs, in a movement that has been outlawed by China.  So that represents yet another source of organ removal, unauthorized by the individual whose organ it represents, but a matter of state policy, a state that asks for agreement from no one.

China has, by these practices, become a source for organ transplants for international travellers who are unable to source organs legally in their own countries of residence.  These people, desperate to prolong their lives through the transplantation of someone else's healthy organs, are willing to pay handsomely for the opportunity to undergo surgery and live to see another changing of the seasons.

China claims to be cracking down on illegal operations in which the state has no hand. The Chinese authorities have arrested five people in southern China recently, charging them with intentional injury.

A Chinese teenager seems to have valued the potential acquisition of an iPhone and an iPad, far above the value he placed in his kidneys.  Do 17-year-old boys generally think that any harm can come to them?  They are invincible, their lives spread before them through the years to come.  This boy obviously felt he had two kidneys and he could get along well enough with one.

But the boy, identified by his surname Wang, has discovered that life and foolish decision-making are more complicated in their issues than his imagination might have supplied.  He now suffers from renal deficiency as a result of the surgery undertaken to remove one of his kidneys.

Which leaves the question of surgical practise at the hands of those qualified to remove organs, living in the dim shadow of the criminal netherworld. The boy now requires one of those rare objects to regain his health and his future - a kidney from some source other than his own, and they are difficult to come by.

He was paid $3,500 for his generous offer to surrender one of his kidneys.  The individual who arranged the kidney removal, conscripting the services of a surgeon (who obviously bungled the surgery as far as the 17-year-old's future is concerned) was paid $35,000 by someone who valued it highly enough.

That greater sum was split with the surgeon and the three other defendants along with medical staff.  Supplementing their income, in a practise that is more common than might be imagined.

The boy, post-surgery, bought an iPhone and iPad, the hugely desired objects that led him to sacrifice his kidney.  When his mother asked how he had obtained the money to fund his purchases, he informed her of his decision.  In China, iPhones start at $635, and iPads at $475.

This boy, from Anhui province, one of China's poorest, is now experiencing a deteriorating renal deficiency.  And he is now facing the very same dilemma that most Chinese in need of an organ transplant face, only a fraction of whom are able to obtain one.  Even while China's black market for human organs continues to thrive.

Officially, the trading of human organs was banned in China in 2007.