Gather any group of 40 or 50 year old guys, mention Monty Python and invariably the next 20 minutes will be filled with British accents and the verbal replaying of a half dozen scenes from the Holy Grail. This classic comedy is still busting sides thirty-four years after it was released.
The infectious nature of this movie seems to provide credibility to the watch dog groups who sit in judgment on violent movies and count every bullet shot, appendage severed or nipple exposed. Their thesis is that violence portrayed on screen will find its way in to every day life. I've always been dubious of this opinion. However, after seeing news reports of impressionable teen boys acting out violently after diets of Grand Theft Auto and slasher films, I am beginning to think life's imitation of art can be portrayed in the comedic or dramatic venue; and there seems to be no plot too ludicrous for a dose of reality.
In Monty Python's Meaning of Life there is a skit involving a unique view of Organ donors and the contract they enter when they sign on the bottom line after waiting a few days in the line at the DMV. You may want to check the fine print after watching this:
(Warning: this "side splitting" humor involves actual side splitting and blood spattering)
While this concept may seem too outrageous to ever be played out, I am afraid our society of obliterated boundries and reality television is proving nothing is impossible.
It probably took the Chinese about one day to begin bootlegging The Meaning of Life when it came out. One can only wonder how long it took for one of these bootlegged copies to work its way up the food chain in the People's Government until it reached someone with enough power, enough motivation and so little care for human life to put the idea of live organ donations in to play.
In cities across China there are vans circling neighborhoods like vultures waiting to pounce on carrion. Except these vans arrive pre mortem. These death mobiles are like the Grim Reapers personal bus service and their stops are at the homes of those convicted and sentenced to death under the State's brutal penal code. There are no fewer than sixty-eight crimes punishable by death in China and among them are things as innocuous as fraud and, probably, passing wind in a closed elevator.
Death is by lethal injection and the sentence is carried out while double parked with the engine running. Officials seem to think the local nature of the execution serves as a deterrent and they are saving a ton by not having to feed a parking meter or maintain centralized facilities of death.
When the convicted have ceased their life function, doctors begin harvesting the dead's usable body parts; picking them clean faster than a Thanksgiving turkey at the Klump's house. Like Indians efficiently divvying up a Buffalo, the organs are dispersed to clinics all over China, where they are transplanted into the ailing bodies of the wealthy - and thousands more who come as 'organ tourists' from neighboring countries such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan.
The Communist government is hush hush on how many of these vans are in service though it is estimated there could be as many as 10,000 executions this year; more if Taco Bell expands to areas outside Beijing.
Of 10,000 liver transplants performed in the country last year, fewer than 300 of the "donated" parts came from voluntary donors. Statistics like this make me think twice when I hear researchers in the United States vehemently deny that embryonic research will ever lead to "cloning for parts" of human beings. I hear Schwarzzeneger's "The Sixth Day" (a cloning movie) was quite popular in the capital of Beijing a few years ago.
I just renewed my license a few months ago. I best check that donor line again.
S2
1 comment:
I don't visit this site often enough.
When I first read this article, I did several things. First, I watched the Python sketch, and laughed, as I always do (Thank you!). Then I remembered that tomorrow is April 1, and wondered. Then I went to snopes.com and searched there. No matches. Then I Googled "Chinese death van" and found hits from apparently legit sites like USA Today. I guess these vans are for real. Then I started to think.
I used to be in favor of capital punishment. Or at least part of me still is, and another part is wavering, a lot. Death is very final. Governments are imperfect. DNA analysis is freeing more and more convicts from punishment for crimes that they apparently could not have committed. I imagine myself being on a jury that convicts, imposes a death sentence, and then learns, too late, that the victim couldn't have done the crime. It would probably sour me on jury duty again forever, if I wasn't already soured on the concept. (Sidebar: As it exists in the US today, jury duty is a form of involuntary servitude. Serving- er,wrong word- participating on a jury should be voluntary. On the other hand, if juries can absolve in error as well as convict in error, maybe we should re-think our rules about double jeopardy).
Then I thought about how in China, the death penalty doesn't fit so many crimes. The evils of a totalitarian state, I said to myself. And then I wondered about the use of force by any person or institution, but that topic is worth its own blog, and then some.
But then I thought about the concept of self-ownership. What does it mean to own something? Who owns you, or me? Or rather, who should, by right, own you or me, since in actuality, every time we are forced to do something, the entity that's forcing us owns us, at least a little bit? Add up the little bits, and you might be owned a lot more than you thought you were. Anyway, I believe in self ownership-- no one should own me, except me. Anyone who takes me, or any of my posessions that I created, or acquired without force, is violating the most basic of my property rights.
So. About cloning. If I own myself, why can't I scrape off a few bits of myself and make a new copy? If the copy grows like other humans, and can think and act independently, like other humans, then the clone is a human, but a different, unique person. Makes sense. After all, identical twins are nature's clones, and no one argues that either or both aren't human. As a thinking, reasoning human, my clone has the same rights to self ownership as I do. But could he eventually be convinced to donate, say, a kidney to me (Just like kidney donors do today; we think these donors are noble, not contemptible)? Have we violated any rights in the process? Go a step further. If my clone could be persuaded to die, and then I harvest his organs (assuming he filled out that card), have we violated anybody's rights, even then? Remember, this is all done voluntarily. I can conceive of situations where I would voluntarily give my life to save my children. What's the difference?
That's all I can pull out of my brain tonight. Regards.
CrackerBarrel.
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