Hillary Clinton and John Edwards and Barack Obama and Jim Doyle should read it, too.
The utopia of socialized medicine is a myth.
Case in point:
A former surfing champion has flown to the Philippines to buy a new kidney after waiting for a transplant in Britain for more than four years.
Mark Schofield has saved £40,000 for the life-saving operation in the hope of finding a poor filipino to sell him an organ.
The 43-year-old said he had no choice but to become a 'transplant tourist' after being let down by the donor service in Britain.
Britian's health care system has let Schofield down.
How can that be?
Universal health care is the way to go. At least that's what we keep hearing from the Dems and fringe Leftists like Sicko Michael Moore.
He added: 'I'm not prepared to lie down and play dead. I've got to take a gamble – I can't just sit here and do nothing.
'I know the moral argument about buying and selling organs but I also know I have two young children who I want to see grow up.' mr Schofield was struck down by kidney disease 20 years ago, when he was a professional surfer on the world circuit.
His mother, Jean, donated one of her kidneys so he could start a family and carry on with his life.
But now the businessman, from Porthcawl, South Wales, needs another transplant.
Because he has a rare blood type, the donor service has failed to find him a match after four-and-a-half years.
There are 6,500 people on the waiting list for a kidney transplant in Britain but just 1,800 operations were carried out last year.
To be fair, people lingering on waiting lists for organs isn't just a problem in countries with socialized medicine.
The demand for transplant organs is far greater than available organs.
But let's not pretend that universal health care is a panacea. Let's not be fooled by the promises from the Dem presidential candidates and their visions of government-run health care.
That's issue one in this story.
Issue two: The morality of going to a third world country to find a poor person willing to sell an organ.
A person is clearly in a desperate situation when one is willing to sell one's body parts.
It could be worse.
Getting compensated for giving up an organ is far better than what has gone on in China.
About a year ago, Beijing finally acknowledged reports of organ harvesting.
Following years of denial, China has acknowledged that foreigners who can pay more than native Chinese have been given preference for organ transplants and that "donors" for the operation have often been executed prisoners.
WND reported in 2004 charges by the banned Falun Gong group – backed up by Chinese doctors and human rights experts – that the communist government was torturing prisoners, executing them and trafficking in their body parts.
This week, at a summit for transplant doctors held in Guangzhou, the once-denied practice was confirmed by government officials.
"Apart from a small portion of traffic victims, most of the organs from cadavers are from executed prisoners," said Vice Health Minister Huang Jiefu, according to English-language China Daily newspaper. "The current organ donation shortfall can't meet demand."
A ministry spokesman also said that "wealthier people, including foreign patients" were able to move to the top of waiting lists ahead of others waiting for organs.
If an individual freely chooses to sell an organ, fully understanding the risks, I guess that's a legitimate choice, albeit an extreme one.
However, when political prisoners are tortured and then executed for the purpose of harvesting their organs for transplantation to the highest bidder, that's positively barbaric.
Where's the outrage from the so-called human rights organizations?
Where's the outrage from the Dems on this torture?
They're too busy condemning the Bush administration and the U.S. over waterboarding.
_________________
Does the name Wang Wenyi ring a bell?
Refresh your memory here and here and here.
No comments:
Post a Comment