Reprints Online

Discover magazine had an ad about Chinese organ harvesting - they were against it - and I had to wonder jut how much of a problem it really is. The Chinese government executes their condemned prisoners with a bullet in the head to carefully make sure that the rest of the body is useful. Then they sell it off for what they can get.

We in America like to think that all Chinese that are condemned to die must be Democratic political activists or incarcerated for other noble political reasons, but most likely they're murderers and rapists and other scumbags death penalty proponents would say deserve it. Not all of them, of course, but more guilty than innocent I'm sure - just like here in America. Some innocent get killed - just like in America.

The 'spare parts' argument for the death penalty is a new one in my book. Sure the Chinese have been doing it for years, but now in America there's been talk about not wasting the valuable organs and body parts that go with the life we take. For example, there was a guy killed in Illinois who wanted to give his liver to his sister after he died(they didn't let him). There was another more recent one where the condemned was allowed to give up a kidney to a sibling before he was executed. And I think some prisoners are allowed to donate organs on their death like the rest of us are allowed to. The difference is that we don't know exactly when it is that we might make that donation, and they do.

There's a lot of money in human body parts. Healthy tissues and organs go for a lot of money, especially after they've been processed into useful products for the American marketplace. So, where there's a lot of money there's also going to be a lot of crime. Believe it or not there's sprung up a new business in body thieves. Former Masterpiece theater host Aleister Cooke had his ninety five year old bones stolen after his death.

I once read an icky science fiction story along the lines of what the Chinese are actually doing. This story was set in a dystopian future world where there was an authoritarian government who would punish especially despised dissidents by rendering them for spare parts to be transplanted. But - here's the icky part - they kept these people alive while they slowly dismembered them and removed the various organs that were needed so that in the end they would be limbless, sightless, and only had enough parts to keep them barely going. Then they would finally kill them and use what was left.

There was another novel along the same lines only this time it was entire human bodies. In this semi-dystopia future everybody had to take IQ tests and if you scored below a certain level then you had to give up your body when you were twenty eight years old to somebody old and smart, who would then have his brain transplanted into it. Needless to say, there are some huge flaws with this scenario and I can't help but wonder why more dumb twenty-eight year olds didn't complain more about this. The book had them grumbling a bit, but not near enough where it should have been. Still, I recall enjoying this book because as improbable as it seems, that's why it's called fiction.

America has so far seemed to shy away from the Chinese model of slaughtering citizens for profit. Speaking from an economic standpoint, it just wouldn't work. We spend millions and millions of dollars on each person we execute - almost all of that in court costs, appeals and such. To incarcerate one person costs on average fifty thousand dollars a year, which, optimistically is less than could be made off of them. You'd think that it would make sense for us to allow death row inmates to donate organs voluntarily - and I can see that. People being executed are still human beings and they still have humanitarian and compassionate impulses, maybe even wanting some good to come out of their deaths.

Mostly, in America, we believe in executing all of the person and that means every single part of them. If their heart's still beating in somebody else, that's not really justice, is it?

About the Author

Steve Sommers is the author of Breakfast with the Antichrist. His new novel, REXROI, along with the best of Australian Science Fiction, Horror, and Fantasy is available in ebook format at http://www.rspublishing.com.au, OR - if you ABSOLUTELY insist on turning pages when you read - at http:www.lulu.com/content/306670