Illegal Organ Transplant Mastermind Turns Himself Into Police After Hiding In China for 8 Years
It will be interesting to see how much jail time this guy gets for his illegal organ transplant scheme:
The person responsible for 87 illegal organs transplant cases was arrested by the police, putting an end to eight years of hiding in China.
During that time, South Korean patients were supplied organs from deceased Chinese, some of whom were victims of accidents or executed convicts.The Busan Metropolitan Police reported Monday the suspect, identified by his surname Kim, was arrested and charged with brokering an illegal organs trade with his Chinese partners in China.
Kim, 43, arranged a total of 87 illegal organ transplant surgeries between June 2006 and February 2011 by opening an online community site, which he advertised as a community forum for patients in need of organs transplant. By luring potential clients who were ailing from illnesses such as chronic renal insufficiency and liver cancer to his online site, Kim was found to have brokered illegal transplant surgeries worth around 6 billion won ($5.3 million) in total.
Kim pocketed 600 million won, the police discovered.
The police said Kim led the illegal campaign by arraigning schedules and locations for surgeries. In most cases, organs came from Chinese convicts just executed on death row or Chinese people killed in accidents. Among the 87 cases, six involved organs from live donors. Details as to how the suspect kept in touch with his associates in China were not disclosed.
The police added Kim had stayed in China since 2008 as an illegal alien and avoided arrest. After eight years of living in self-imposed exile, Kim, possibly exhausted from years of laying low, contacted police in South Korea in June and expressed his intention to turn himself in. He was arrested upon his arrival last month at Gimpo International Airport. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link.
Hmmm.
So organs were taken from dead people who didn’t need them and given to sick people who needed them but were jerked around by the official system.
Based on the information given, it appears to be a pretty victimless crime.
It seems like the only real crime here is government control over the market which keeps black market prices at 60 thousand dollars a pop.
“So organs were taken from dead people who didn’t need them”.
But we are talking about China.
If you count people belonging to Falun Gong, and political prisoners who were executed for their religious and political beliefs, as people who didn’t need those organs.
@Chickenhead, I would think something like organ transplants needs to be regulated. This would prevent people from being killed for their organs. I am not a doctor but I would think organs would also need to be medically screened to make sure they are healthy before being put into somebody else.
Oh dear.
I don’t think I advocated killing people for their organs or China’s death penalty policies.
My comment is that there is a surplus of available and truly unneeded organs due to accidents (and executions), there is a long list of people who need them, and there is a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy in the middle.
The lack of safety that causes accidents and the (possibly) overly-harsh punishment for crime and dissension in China are different issues… not really associated with the fact there are extra organs and there are people who need them.
If “official” channels can’t get their acts together, it makes complete sense for someone to supply the reasonable demand of those who would like a functional heart instead of passing away.
Sympathies certainly lie with the person slowly dying a preventable death over the person who is already dead and no longer in need of their parts. Anybody who disagrees with this may be lacking some fundamental aspects of humanity… such as reasoning and empathy.
Should organ use be regulated? Sure… much as everything from food safety to bank robbery is. In fact, organ transplant standards are pretty self-regulating as it is. Checks for condition, compatibility, disease, etc., are part of the deal. Believe it or not, doctors who went through the effort to learn how to install new organs generally strive for success. People aren’t getting new livers installed in a back-alley barbershop by greedy butchers with two weeks of training regardless of what imaginary visions of “unregulated” organ transplant one might have dreamed up. This overpriced black market exists not due to a lack of regulation but due to needless OVERregulation.
The concern of people being killed for their organs only exist because the price is kept so artificially high in a world where the number of healthy organs going to waste each day due to honest accidents far exceeds the demand.
Again, based on the information given, this guy did not kill anyone. He took unneeded organs from dead people and sold them to live people so they would not be dead. He charged the going rate for China (about 60K for a kidney) which is far less than the rate in America (262K).
Sure… this is all rather distasteful… but I cannot blame him. I blame the “system” and see him as working around it and doing more good than harm in the process.
Bureaucracies exist to create shortages that require additional bureaucrats to manage…