Who Should “Get a Cut” from an Organ Transplant? A Japanese Issue in More Ways than One
I am channel-surfing over a bowl of ramen, when I come across a BBC report on the exploding growth of the Chinese organ transplant industry using organs “donated” by executed criminals. A sting operation of sorts, the investigation team has gone in with a hidden video camera to negotiate a liver transplant. In the huge, gleaming hospital (last year, it doubled its capacity to accommodate all the foreign patients, including 600 liver transplants anually, at £50,000 a pop or more), the head of customer relations claims the condemned criminals donate their organs to society as compensation for the wrongs they have inflicted. (This and more I am taking in, in a combination of voiceover and subtitles.) I bet, I think, even as I am imagining ethically (to me) acceptable and more equitable ways of handling organ transplants in general and waxing metaphysical about the individual’s posthumous rights to his/her body and what society should have to say about its ultimate disposal.
My lunchtime reverie is interrupted, however, when an agent from the sales force arrives and delivers a more detailed pitch. He explains among other things that supply goes up when national party conventions and other such major events draw near. The reason for this is that the authorities want stability going into these affairs, so they crackdown on crime, thus resulting in more executions. (Justice in China is sometimes swift and brutal, it seems.) But no, this is not what has disturbed my rapture. Rather, I am no longer relying on the voiceover and subtitles; the agent is speaking perfect native Japanese.
It appears there are other ways than this near-fraud for us Japanese to get involved in the shadier parts of the organ transplant industry.
******
(For the record, the people taped sitting and milling around in the capacious hospital waiting room (lobby?) looked largely Middle East in face and garb. But I could be wrong. Has anyone reading this seen the program?)
My lunchtime reverie is interrupted, however, when an agent from the sales force arrives and delivers a more detailed pitch. He explains among other things that supply goes up when national party conventions and other such major events draw near. The reason for this is that the authorities want stability going into these affairs, so they crackdown on crime, thus resulting in more executions. (Justice in China is sometimes swift and brutal, it seems.) But no, this is not what has disturbed my rapture. Rather, I am no longer relying on the voiceover and subtitles; the agent is speaking perfect native Japanese.
It appears there are other ways than this near-fraud for us Japanese to get involved in the shadier parts of the organ transplant industry.
******
(For the record, the people taped sitting and milling around in the capacious hospital waiting room (lobby?) looked largely Middle East in face and garb. But I could be wrong. Has anyone reading this seen the program?)
posted by Jun Okumura at 12:42 PM
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