Category: …and everything else

I forgot to link to this, didn’t I? It appears that organ sales are booming in China, and the organs are being harvested from prisoners. Not that this is some great surprise, but that people are being executed on an as-needed basis is… disconcerting.

Of course, in the comments for the article, someone tries to argue that Buddhist perspectives on organ donation limit the number of people who will consent to donation, thus China has to have a thriving organ sales market. Problem is, the prisoner is dead, so they’re not getting the money from the sale, and the prisoner’s family isn’t, either. In fact, it’s being presented as a “gift to society” – a gift with a hefty pricetag for the person skipping their country’s donation list to move to the head of the Chinese class.

Anyhow! I take exception to the idea that Buddhist perspectives on organ donation limit the number of donations, unless it’s from a purely practical, China censoring Buddhist leaders perspective. As I said in the comment thread, although there is the typical sitting for the bardo, which requires that the body remain where it is for three days past signs of cessation of life (in order for the essence to leave the body, and not remain in a lingering state, a sort of ghost of the word – a literal getting over attachment to the body, if you will), over the last 20 years most of the high ranking folk in Buddhism have come out strongly in favour of organ donation – it is, after all, a painless way of gaining merit.

If you really want to talk from a Buddhist perspective, you do have to question whether or not someone in jail is being pressured into doing something they might not want to do, or be comfortable doing. Jail, and knowing you’re going to be killed – that’s a pretty coercive environment. While donation of organs is a marvelous karmic boon, it’s only good if it’s done voluntarily and with no anxiety.

The concern becomes the taking of an organ of someone who was coerced into donating, or who did not consent or voluntarily give their organs – this could be viewed as karmically negative, of contributing to harm of another person. Your need/desire to overcome your body/shell’s imperfections to attain a longer/healthier life causing the death of another person would be a very bad thing. Given the report and the questions raised by the BBC, I’d think Buddhists in China would be wary about accepting organ donation, not about donating themselves.

To say I was lucky would be an understatement. To this day, I still can’t believe the series of events and how they happened at the same time I found the writing discipline and initiative that I’d so studiously avoided for three years. I have little advice for people wishing to break in to the business. No one else broke in the way I did, indeed, every writer I know has a unique tale to tell of how they got their break. The only lesson I draw from my experience is that I think everyone gets their break in this industry, but the question is whether you’re ready, willing and able to take advantage of that break when it happens. I was, and so I made it, but I’ve known many others who have had their break, only to watch it pass them by for one reason or another. It’s the kind of business that will discourage you if you can be discouraged, and you need to know that about yourself right from the beginning.
-Ron Moore

So last month, Stanford ix-nayed pharmaceutical freebies; the easist way to find any information about the ban is to simply search on David Magnus’s name; (Google likes to tell me every time some small paper picks up a larger syndicated article – you’d be amazed how often I’ve seen his name in the last three weeks). But basically, the idea is that even small gifts have been shown to influence physicians. The big pharma argument has been, for years, that they have allowances of no more than $100 per physician, and the cost is too small to really influence the course of decisions. It’s probably not a surprise to anyone familiar with some theories of gift economies that this isn’t actually the case, and something like pens, pads of branded paper, and/or a nice lunch will actually influence a physician’s prescribibg habit.

Anyhow, the commentary around this has really been run quite into the ground at this point, and I bring it up actually because of The Colbert Report and Demoicracy Now! guest Amy Goodman. Ms. Goodman drew some interesting parallels between gift economy/reciprocal altriusm (without using the language) and embedded journalists. An emdedded journalist relies on the troops they’re with to protect them, keep them safe, keep them informed. It runs very strongly counter to the best interests of the journalist (staying alive) to do anything to piss the troops off – like report negatively on them.

If something so simple as a less than $100 gift, a pen or pad, is enough to sway the opinion of someone who has, in theory, received enough education to make appropriate choices based on empiracal evidence and not gifts, how can it not be a force strong enogh to influence the reporting choices of someone whose life is potentially on the line? There is a sublte threat and coercion there which strongly tilts the reporting cards towards the military and away from factual reporting.