Chinese and Belgians Take Organ Harvesting to New, Sickening Level

Through organ transplantation, medicine has come up with an extraordinary way to extend life for an individual in danger of dying from organ failure. Organ donation is promoted in numerous ways. Everyone knows someone who has had a lifesaving organ transplant.

The Chinese and Belgians have taken organ transplantation to a new and sickening level. Just a few short years after euthanasia became legal in Belgium, doctors there have linked euthanasia with organ harvesting. Wesley Smith reports that between January of 2007 and December of 2009, 17 lung transplants were performed with four or them following euthanasia of the donor patients. Smith notes the danger of this process because vulnerable people with disabilities, perhaps who believe they are or could become a burden, could be coaxed into offering a “benefit” to society by agreeing to be be killed for their organs.

The Chinese theory is — why waste an execution? A recent article in the Weekly Standard describes in gory detail how Chinese prisoners were taken to a remote location where graves had been dug. Ambulances stood by to receive prisoners who had been shot in the right side of the heart, providing maximum conditions for harvesting their organs. After the organs are retrieved, the prisoners were buried and the ambulances sped to medical centers where transplant recipients awaited.

How sickening that a positive lifesaving process can be so distorted.

Barbara Lyons