Health roundup: Organ harvesting, kidney profits and Haitian headhunters (satire)

Friday, March 24, 2006 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: organ transplants, health news, Natural News

Further demonstrating that U.S. doctors are, indeed, mad, two doctors are now publicly promoting the idea that it should be legal for people to sell their own kidneys (and other organs) to patients needing transplants. Such a move would, of course, transform the poorest members of society into easily exploitable organ factories for the rich, most of whom only need organ transplants because they abused their own organs in the first place. (The demand for organ transplants from actual trauma is very low compared to the demand from people who have abused their own organs through poor diet, drug and alcohol abuse, prescription medications and general stupidity.)

So why would doctors want the organ market to be legal? Because it makes them money, of course, to extract organs from one person and reconnect them in another. And that's not to mention all the immune-modulating drugs, follow up visits and medical costs caused by complications. Make no mistake: Organs transplants are big, big business. It's not only about savings lives.

But hey, if we're going to legalize the selling of a person's own organs, why stop there? Why not go China on the issue and legalize the harvesting of organs from prisoners, too? And homeless people. Heck, there must be millions of spare kidneys just waiting to be taken from people who are too underprivileged to protest. Plus, it can all be done in the name of compassion and medical science. "We're saving lives!" surgeons can proudly proclaim as they pocket organ transplant paychecks and wipe the blood off their hands.

Believe it or not, two days after I wrote what you just read above, a clan of crazed medical do-gooders in Canada rose to the occasion and are now proposing precisely what I was jokingly suggesting. Check this out...

Ontario hospitals to "freely harvest organs" of dead patients -- without their consent

If a new bill becomes law in the province of Ontario, hospitals there will have the full legal right to harvest organs from dead patients even without their consent! In other words, if you don't scream, "No harvesting!" right before you die in an Ontario emergency room, your organs will quickly be removed and sold to transplant centers where they are marked up and resold to desperate transplant patients at enormous profits.

This gives rise to a great new medical product idea I have for Canadians. It's a medical safety band you wear on your wrist. If you're ever in an accident, paramedics will read that it says, "Take me to TORONTO!" Even if the long ambulance drive kills you, at least you'll rest in peace.

If you happen to be unconscious from a car crash, though, you'd better hope your heart doesn't skip a beat, or the medical crazies in the organ transplant industry might just lunge right in and start harvesting even before you're actually dead. (It's harsh criticism, yes, but when there are profits to be had, when has conventional medicine ever put patients' lives first anyway?)

In China, they harvest organs from executed prisoners, but Canada appears to be upping the ante on that human rights abuse by potentially harvesting organs from EVERYONE.

Doctors and politicians, of course, will be exempt from the organ harvesting policy, not because they deserve special treatment, but only because they have no hearts to begin with.

That voodoo that you do for customs officials

Speaking of harvested organs (this is quite a macabre collection of strange health news, isn't it?), a Haitian woman was recently arrested by customs official at a Florida airport because she was carrying a decomposed human head in her bag. It's all part of her religious belief that the head helps "ward off evil spirits."

Apparently, it doesn't ward off customs official or their head-sniffing dogs. "We don't tolerate the carrying of dead body parts," stated a senior customs official dressed in a leather jacket made from the skin of a dead cow.

The woman was charged with failing to declare the head (is it a crime not to declare a head?) and, if sentenced, faces the stiff penalty of a public beheading. If that unfolds, who will carry HER head?

Aside from the strangeness of it all, why is it illegal to carry a head in a bag? Isn't this the exact kind of activity the organ transplant industry engages in all the time? In recent revelations, in fact, it has been discovered that organs used for transplants right here in the USA have been ripped from the bodies of presumably unwilling cadavers. Search for "Mastromarino body parts" on Google to see for yourself.

That's different, you might say. Organs for transplants are carried on ice in a medical cooler. Okay, so what if this Haitian woman had her human head good luck charm buried in a picnic cooler under a ham sandwich? Do you suppose it all would have been fine with customs, then?

Is there a law against carrying body parts around? Look, I'm not condoning this practice, but there sure seems like a double standard here. Don't some people carry a rabbit's foot for good luck? That's a dead body part, too, and I don't see customs officials arresting people for having rabbit's feet. How about travelers carrying hot dogs? Hot dogs are made from cow parts that I guarantee you are every bit as gross as a human head. Search Google for "Advanced Meat Recovery machine" to see what I mean, if you dare.

And how about fur coats? Isn't fur a body part? Shouldn't people who wear fur coats be arrested for WEARING body parts? At least the Haitian woman wasn't actually wearing the human head. That would have been really weird. Almost as weird as wearing the fur of another animal at a time in the history of civilization when, clearly, we have mastered the complex science of textiles.

So to all those people and customs officials who point the finger at this Haitian woman for toting around a spare head, I ask you: What are YOU wearing, carrying around, or actually eating that was once part of a living, breathing mammal?