In a message dated 11/30/98 3:55:36 PM Central Standard Time, planetp@aci.net writes:
>
> > EvMick@aol.com wrote:
> >
> > > However in state sponsored executions I would like to see the method
> changed.
> > > I think total body organ harvesting would be much more appropriate.
> >
> > Hardly. Putting a profit motive before the state would cause the state to
> seek to
> > expand the penalty to more and more crimes. Even, and especially, in a
> popular
> > democracy, with an aging population, there will be public pressure to
> expand the
> > penalty to more and more crimes. Larry Niven discussed this in many of
his
> Known
> > Space stories.
>
> Absolutely. China has been engaged in for-profit organ harvesting of
> executed
> prisoners for at least the past 20 years. Not only are these prisoners
> executed in
> public stadiums, but their organs are harvested immediately afterwards and
> sold to
> the highest bidder. The Chinese government, inept in obtaining money by
any
> legitimate economic means, resorts to the most arbitrary definition of what
> a
> "criminal" is, that it can essentially arrest anyone at anytime for any
> reason.
> Motivate arbitrary arrest with a profit motive, and you have one of the
most
> cruel
> and tyrannical governments on the planet.
>
> Perhaps that is why, when I see rhetoric on this list discussing mechanisms
> moving in
> the same direction (no matter how well intended), I see China as the end
> result.
> There is a reason we have the Bill of Rights, because humans are fallible,
> and large
> numbers of them without checks and balances can be downright dangerous.
>
> Paul Hughes
>
>
I didn't know that.
May I withdraw that comment?
EvMick