News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by pcurve on Saturday April 06, 2019 @07:08PM (#19593599)
I actually know someone who got one done in 2006. From what I remember, it was one of those don't ask don't tell deal. However it was understood that the organ came from executed prisoner. It saved her life. I don't know anything about what goes into ensuring donor's organ is a reasonable match, but I'm not too sure if the waiting period for her was that long. Anyway I do remember it became much more difficult for foreigner to get transplant shortly afterwards but this article seems to indicate the trend is reversing with institional practice.
Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by Teever on Saturday April 06, 2019 @08:09PM (#19593849)
I always wondered why Steve Jobs waited around so long for his liver transplant instead of just getting one from China.

And before you say morals don't forget he gamed the waiting list in the US to get the too-late liver and he had no qualms seeing slave labour build his companies products.

Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by dpark on Saturday April 06, 2019 @11:21PM (#19594596)
Steve Jobs didn’t need a Chinese organ. He just needed to decide he was ready to get the transplant instead of trying to cure his cancer with a special diet. Once he realized he wasn’t curing himself with his diet, he got the transplant quickly because, as you noted, he gamed the system.
Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by Teever on Tuesday April 09, 2019 @02:09PM (#19617436)
But once he was on the transplant list he still had to wait and he still gamed it to shorten that wait.

Which makes me wonder why he didn't just get a Chinese liver at that point.

Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by dpark on Tuesday April 09, 2019 @03:51PM (#19618310)
Possibly because he didn't want someone killed for his liver. Also it's not clear how long Jobs actually waited. In addition to the geographic system gaming, there was some shady stuff with the doctor who gave Jobs the transplant.

http://fortune.com/2013/12/08/the-surgeon-who-gave-steve-job...

Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by ycombonator on Saturday April 06, 2019 @03:34PM (#19592575)
Where are the organs coming from? China claims it has the “largest voluntary organ donation system in Asia” and stopped using prisoners in 2015. But the country has no tradition of voluntary organ donation.
Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by reaperducer on Saturday April 06, 2019 @07:01PM (#19593571)
stopped using prisoners in 2015

"Congratulations, Prisoner #289,349 — you've been paroled. You're no longer a prisoner!"

"You mean I'm free to go?"

"Well, most of you is. Step this way..."

Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by coldtea on Saturday April 06, 2019 @07:23PM (#19593655)
>But the country has no tradition of voluntary organ donation

So? Modern China also didn't have a tradition of for profit companies and skyscrapers, but they managed to do well in both...

Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by aetherspawn on Saturday April 06, 2019 @11:53PM (#19594730)
Interesting; I had only heard the other day from a bizarre discussion with a Chinese friend who has a family member in government back in China that the price of an organ can increase if the donor is from a clean Christain denomination, because it is feasible that the organs are better kept (ie not an alcoholic, not a drug taker, not a smoker etc) before their donor was deceased.

Supposedly there is a market for the healthiest organs to the highest bidder. I guess they hit the jackpot!

Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by Leary on Saturday April 06, 2019 @06:36PM (#19593435)
There are 36,000 organ transplants performed in the US every year, does anyone know how many occur in China?
Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by disillusioned on Saturday April 06, 2019 @06:47PM (#19593502)
The article touches on this momentarily:

>In 2010 China’s official number of voluntary donors was 34. In 2018 China still had only about 6,000 official organ donors, who are said to donate more than 18,000 organs. Yet the “Bloody Harvest” researchers find that figure is “easily surpassed by just a few hospitals.” Tianjin First Center alone performs more than 6,000 transplants a year, and the report’s authors “verified and confirmed 712 hospitals which carry out liver and kidney transplants.” Dr. Huang claims China will perform the most transplants in the world by 2020—more than America’s 40,000 a year.

Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by yodon on Saturday April 06, 2019 @06:14PM (#19593338)
I confess I fail to see how outline.com (which is currently where this link leads) is anything but a massive content piracy machine masquerading as some kind of tech startup.

I find it incredibly hard to believe HN would allow submissions of warez sites and links to cracked app downloads, and fail to see the difference between that and the way outline is used here. I get that it's convenient to have free access to paywalled content, just like it's convenient to have free access to tons of cracked apps.

Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by sniperjzp on Saturday April 06, 2019 @06:39PM (#19593452)
+1, considering the amount of time and effort the author put in the post, outline.com draws traffic to their site, the author can't get the enough feedback and attention (sometimes the $), loosing the incentive of creating more original content, leading to the damage to the whole ecosystem.
Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by bsder on Saturday April 06, 2019 @07:05PM (#19593586)
If people didn't submit paywalled articles, there would be no use for outline.com, and it wouldn't exist.

While I have no use for paywalled articles, I can't seem to avoid them in my Google searches and fora that I read.

Using outline.com allows me to demonetize the practice from both sides and discourage it.

Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by yodon on Saturday April 06, 2019 @07:31PM (#19593691)
So using warez sites and downloading cracked apps is how you demonetize those who make their living writing software? The economic impact of warez sites and outline.com are the same, they just impact different industries.
Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by door5 on Sunday April 07, 2019 @09:18AM (#19596623)
Yes that rules also. Information and technology should be free.
Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by bsder on Saturday April 06, 2019 @11:22PM (#19594603)
I have no problem with treating paywall like warez and banning them. The problem I have is that I can't escape paywall like I can warez.

Paywall clogs my search results and my fora even though I don't want it.

Give me a way to never see paywalled results and outline.com will cease to exist for me.

Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by pergadad on Sunday April 07, 2019 @06:40AM (#19595986)
"I don't want to pay, but I still want to see it."

Here's your problem. It's not that they exist, it's that you still want the content, for which they are trying to gain an income.

Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by bsder on Sunday April 07, 2019 @06:19PM (#19600309)
Are you all being deliberately obtuse? Quoting myself:

"Give me a way to never see paywalled results and outline.com will cease to exist for me."

I DON'T WANT TO SEE PAYWALLED ARTICLES! AM I MAKING MYSELF CLEAR?

I don't want them in my search results. I don't want them on my fora.

However, if you rudely shove them in my face in Google, HN, Reddit, etc., then please expect that if I read it (and I normally don't) then I will do so in such a way as to prevent you from monetizing your rude behavior.

Is that crystal fscking clear?

Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by door5 on Sunday April 07, 2019 @09:22AM (#19596633)
Find a business model that doesn't involve a paywall.
Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by dimensi0nal on Saturday April 06, 2019 @06:54PM (#19593538)
You're right. Paywalled articles should be banned entirely.
Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by door5 on Saturday April 06, 2019 @07:52PM (#19593788)
Piracy actually rules
Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by fouric on Monday April 08, 2019 @05:25PM (#19609193)
This comment adds absolutely nothing of value to the conversation whatsoever.
Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by door5 on Tuesday April 09, 2019 @01:21AM (#19612017)
Sure it does. The OP assumed that piracy was bad and compared outline.com to piracy to attempt to argue it is bad. Their premise is false, because actually piracy rules and is good.
Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by door5 on Saturday April 06, 2019 @06:14PM (#19593336)
>Mr. Rogers is East Asia Team Leader at the human-rights organization CSW, deputy chairman of the U.K. Conservative Party’s Human Rights Commission

Hm, I wonder what the political motives of the author are.

Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by mc32 on Saturday April 06, 2019 @06:41PM (#19593473)
Maybe regardless of politics they’re just appalled at the idea someone can be forced to donate organs?
Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by _bxg1 on Saturday April 06, 2019 @07:08PM (#19593603)
Unless you're suggesting he's part of a grand conspiracy to fabricate this data, I find his politics extremely irrelevant.
Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by coldtea on Saturday April 06, 2019 @07:25PM (#19593664)
Why wouldn't he be "part of a grand conspiracy to fabricate this data"? It's called promoting their country's national interests, and it's part of the job description for such roles.

Conspiracy doesn't have to include loonies, aliens, and illuminati. Nation states do conspiracies perfectly well, they just call them "foreign policy", and include presenting the data as they like, painting the pictures to fit the politics of the day, having cosy relations with journalists, getting selective people on the other side (e.g. opposition leaders) to give the kind of statements they like, and so on.

Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by _bxg1 on Saturday April 06, 2019 @07:29PM (#19593679)
Seriously?

"In 2006 Chinese-speaking researchers posed as organ buyers and directly asked if organs from Falun Gong practitioners could be arranged for transplant. Hospitals throughout China confirmed they had such organs available, no problem.

The stories are brutal. Dr. Enver Tohti, a former surgeon from Xinjiang, testified in the British, Irish and European parliaments to removing organs from a prisoner forcibly in 1995. “We had been told to wait behind a hill, and come into the field as soon as we’d hear the gunshot,” he recalled. “A moment later there were gunshots. Not one, but many. We rushed into the field. An armed police officer approached us and told me where to go. He led us closer, then pointed to a body, saying, ‘This is the one.’ By then our chief surgeon appeared from nowhere and told me to remove the liver and two kidneys.” According to Dr. Tohti, the man’s wound was not necessarily fatal. But Dr. Tohti went ahead and removed the liver and kidneys while the man’s heart was still beating.

Experts around the world have testified to China’s crimes. Israel, Taiwan and Spain have banned “organ tourism” to China. United Nations rapporteurs have called China to account for the sources of their organs but received no response."

This isn't just some rogue pundit, this is a major geopolitical topic.

I swear, parts of HackerNews recently have been reading more like InfoWars.

Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by coldtea on Saturday April 06, 2019 @07:36PM (#19593711)
Well, it can be totally true, and it possibly is. Chinese government did kill and torture several million people during the "Cultural Revolution", so there's that.

But it's not true because some organization or high ranking official couldn't possibly be lying or presenting a fine-tuned picture.

Whole trillion dollar wars were supported on false testimony and lies or exaggerations.

E.g. it could just be part of the "China is suppressing Falun Gong" (including executing prisoners they consider leaders etc, and then using their organs) as opposed to "Chinese are so evil that they routinely kill Falun Gong members just to get their organs" (which I find harder to fathom).

I'm skeptical because a lot of times very official testimonies are very official BS (WMDs, "collision", Nayirah testimony, Iran-Contra, and lotsa others), so bullshitting the population and spinning the media is not some unique habit of undemocratic countries.

E.g. one basic pillar of this China-organ story is the so-called "Kilgour-Matas" report. Matas was on the board of the International Centre for Human Rights & Democratic Development, which is not unknown to controversy itself (basically funding radical organizations and R&D to covertly promote foreign interests out of line with its stated purpose) and was closed down later ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Centre_for_Human... ).

Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by _bxg1 on Saturday April 06, 2019 @07:48PM (#19593770)
Fear is the death of reason.

By all means investigate the sources if you wish, but don't peddle conspiracy theories without any actual evidence.

Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by coldtea on Saturday April 06, 2019 @08:06PM (#19593839)
In politics there's seldom evidence available to average Joes.

They release/open some files after decades (not even everything) and you find out that they were lying through their teeth.

If people are to make any difference now, not in several decades, they should doubt most things said officially said, especially for matters concerning trading competitors, or the "enemy du jour" -- evidence or not, they should take things with a grain of salt.

(I'm also from a much smaller country. In countries where politics directly affect you, history is lived and wars are fought directly -- not 10.000 miles away --, and everybody knows everybody, being cynical of official announcements -- of yours and other governments --, and recognizing duplicity and private interests at play, is a survival skill.

In larger countries like the USA, you can live your life oblivious of politics and major historical events, except on a much larger and slower scale. Heck, your country can even be at war decade after decade, and it will only affect a tiny minority of poor folk that go a draft, 99% of the people will live business as usual.

But I digress -- and of course that's not proof that I'm right on this, just my 0.02 in why some can better recognize that "political and private interest conspiracies" are everyday realities, and not the stuff of conspiracy nuts who believe in illuminati. Try telling that to Italians, for example, who have suffered politicians in bed with the Mafia for half a century, had whole establishment programs to meddle with elections (and prevent parties with 20%+ of the popular vote to ever reach power), and even "enjoyed" government backed extremist organizations killing their own citizens -- and all those verified by courts, albeit much much later).

Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by door5 on Saturday April 06, 2019 @08:05PM (#19593836)
The conspiracy theory is "China is wholesale slaughtering political dissidents in order to harvest their organs". Questioning why claims by two researchers funded by the Falun Gong cult get uncritical attention from a Tory writing in the Wall Street Journal isn't a conspiracy theory.
Re:The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China by jasonhansel on Saturday April 06, 2019 @11:44PM (#19594694)
Maybe his motive is...supporting human rights?