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According to a recent BBC undercover investigation, Oct. 1 has many interesting meanings in the People’s Republic of China. It is, of course, the country’s National Day. It is also, the BBC reports, the peak of organ season in China’s rapidly growing organ transplant centers (frequented by many a rich Westerner in need of a liver or two). The reason for this October surge in organ supply is simple, the BBC reports: Prisoner executions in China always go up before the national holiday...
...learned of this fall prisoner organ harvest through hidden camera footage taken by BBC correspondent Rupert Wingfield Hayes. In the video, Hayes strolls into one of the largest organ transplant centers in Northern China in order to procure a liver for his “ailing father.” Not particularly in the mood for subterfuge, Hayes asks the doctors if they received the organs from executed prisoners. The hospital officials cheerfully proclaim, “The prisoners on death row have done many bad things. Before they die they give their organs as a present to society...
This practice should be disturbing to Westerners for a few reasons. Most obviously, the Chinese government’s decision to profit off the remains of executed prisoners is one more nail in the coffin of civil liberties in the country. Even more importantly, unrestricted organ harvesting creates a juicy financial incentive to maximize the number of executions in China, which already happens to execute more people than the rest of the world combined. Yet perhaps the most frightening part about China’s crimes against its citizens is that, for the most part, we don?...
...Most wild birds have some parasites, but these birds were overwhelmed," said Lev G. Gayle, executive director of A&M's veterinary diagnostic lab. Autopsies revealed that the birds had parasites in every organ in their body, even in skeletal muscle and their brains, in a few cases. All wild birds have some level of parasites in their bodies, Gayle said. It was likely these 60, which appeared not to have eaten recently, were the most vulnerable and weakened of a large flock numbering in the hundreds. Increasing parasite levels made them weaker and more susceptible to sudden temperature change...
Cech’s words sound strikingly similar to those of a June 2006 statement from Harvard describing the first science building in Allston as a place “where scientists can work side by side sharing findings and approaches that may apply to different organ systems...