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A CHINESE DOCTOR who performed an organ harvesting operation in the 1990s was among the panel of experts who gave evidence at a Dáil committee today.
The Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence heard evidence from experts including David Matas and Ethan Gutmann, who have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for their work investigating organ harvesting in China.
They made a series of recommendations at committee today, including to urge the government to ban ‘organ tourism’ – where citizens travel abroad to receive an organ transplant.
Such bans are already in place in Israel, Taiwan, Italy and Spain. He said that these countries did so out of a sense of “integrity, a highly-developed sense of tragedy, a historical wisdom to know that the big players, [such as] the US the UK, may not interfere in a world tragedy.”
“If you’re going to act, this is the critical moment, this is the critical time,” Gutmann told the committee today.
The committee also heard strong evidence from Dr Enver Tohti, who gave an account of how he was led to perform organ harvesting on a civilian in China.
“Everytime I give this account it seems like a confession,” he said, before beginning.
“‘How do the most respected people in society turn into murderers?’ This is the most-asked question to me.”
He said to understand that, you have to understand Chinese society where, he told committee members, you become a “fully-programmed member of society, ready to fulfil the task ahead without asking questions”.
He compared it to George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984: “…but in real-world”.
Dr Tohti said at the beginning of his career as a hospital physician, he noticed several children with scars on their bodies caused by “organ harvesting”.
In 1995, he said that two chief surgeons told him to assemble a team “for the largest possible surgery” the following morning.
They were brought to a site outside the hospital, and told wait for the gunshots, he told the committee.
After gunshots were heard, we rushed in. An armed officer directed us to the far-right corner, where I can see a civilian-clothed man lying on the ground with a single bullet wound to his right chest.
My chief surgeons ordered and guided me to extract the liver and the two kidneys. The man was alive. He tried to resist my scalpel cut but [was] too weak to avoid my action.
There was bleeding. He was still alive.
Dr Tohti said that at the time, he thought he was carrying out his duty to “eliminate the enemy of the state”.
Organ donations in China are limited as many people believe they will be reincarnated after death and so feel the need to keep a complete body.
Consistently high demand has created incentives for forced donations and illegal sales, with rights groups long-condemning the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners.
Gutmann estimated at committee today that the industry is worth $8-9 billion, and that there are “60,000 transplants to 100,000 transplants per year”.
China says it banned the practice from the beginning of this year.
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Christ that’s depressing. We need to start protecting our world. Starting with our plastic consumption.
@john Appleseed: only 20% of plastic we put in our recycle bins is actually recycled. 30% ends up in waste. Caught every direction!
@john Appleseed: they really should start with Irish supermarkets where almost every single fruit or vegetable is wrapped in plastic. I don’t see it at that level in any other European country.
Ban plastics
Dolphins use earths magnetic fields to navigate so perhaps that’s changing -
@Denise: It is interesting as it’s now known our iron core is moving and will change. However if that was the case all of them would be on the beaches rather than a few. They’re intelligent animals who communicate so there has to be another reason. If their sonar/hearing has been damaged by something it would point to a cause. I doubt if we have a way yet of doing that type of post mortem.
Why don’t they go back to Wales, where they belong?
@Paul Culligan: Is there a rugby match imminent or something
Do they want Irish passports too?
@Jonathan Nolan: change the record
@john Appleseed: Vivaldi or the Smashing Pumpkins?
Submarine activity around our coast
This is worrying news.
@Blind Faith: https://youtu.be/sq2V6cGYgzw
I only keep the small ones, I throw the big ones back in. Maybe I need a bigger pan.
Not enough social housing.
I blame Leo and FG.
You see loads at mc Donald’s
If you want to do something about plastic pollution create open data on litter anywhere @ openlittermap.com – it’s like Pokémon go for tidy towns!
Has Danny Healy-Rae TD been asked for a statement?
It is now a scientific fact that 10 rivers in asia our introducing 60% of the pollutants into our oceans, how bloody hard can it be to stop it
I wonder how many were died as a result of being caught in Super Trawler nets.
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