village voice > news > China’s Execution, Inc. by Erik Baard and Rebecca Cooney

village voice > news > China’s Execution, Inc. by Erik Baard and Rebecca Cooney:

Three years ago, Dr. Thomas Diflo's moral nightmare walked into his examination room: a patient freshly implanted with a kidney bought from China's death row, where prisoners are killed—sometimes for minor offenses—and their organs harvested.

I read this article with nothing of the horror I should have had, I guess, for, by the end, I was almost sympathetic with the PRC over the harvesting of organs from executees.

Is it wrong to believe that there's nothing wrong with harvesting organs from executed prisoners? I fully agree that a certain air of corruption should be cleaned up - such as the kickbacks and early-warnings of healthy prisoners sent to their deaths for as little as petty theft - but I really do believe that a condemned prisoner should have the ability and maybe the duty to donate something of themself at their death, so that their death can at least bring about some good.

I was actually disappointed to learn that, in America, prisoners have the freedom to watch TV or wage gang wars/rapes in prison but cannot decide to do a thing so noble as donating their organs. Someone explain why prisoners are almost completely barred from even volunteering to donate an organ or two? Sometimes I question whether our inmates have too many rights, but this is one case where I think they have too little!

Show me where I'm wrong, here. I need to understand.