Gresham's Law and Live Organ Harvesting

In the year 2000, China had less than 100 hospitals that could perform organ transplants, while in 2005, more than 500 hospitals were carrying out liver transplants alone, according to Huang Jiefu, the deputy minister of health. Chen Zhonghua, head of the Organ Transplant Research Institute at Tongji Hospital in Wuhan City said, "In economic terms, we are a large country for organ transplants. Lots of foreign patients come to China for donor organs." The growth of the organ transplant market stimulated the sale of immuno-suppressant medications. According to statistics provided by South Medicine Economy Research Institute, trade in the immuno-suppressant drug market currently is about 10 billion yuan. (Chinese currency; 500 yuan is equal to the average monthly income of an urban worker in China)

There are two facts that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can't deny: firstly, the explosive increase in human organ supply in recent years, and secondly, it cannot come up with a legitimate source for all of these organs.

Most people think that the CCP harvests organs from executed inmates. In early March 2006, however, a new organ source was exposed abroad.

Another Organ Source

On July 6th, 2006, two Canadians, international human rights lawyer David Matas, and former Member of Parliament and Secretary of State in charge of Asia and Pacific affairs David Kilgour, published a report summarising the results of their two month independent investigation. The report concludes that the CCP has been harvesting organs from living Falun Gong practitioners.

Some analysts deducted from the numbers of organ transplants that the number of executed prisoners has increased; they therefore deny the existence of harvesting organs from living Falun Gong practitioners. The report states one point, "One cannot estimate executions from transplants unless executions are the only alleged source of transplants. Yet, Falun Gong practitioners are another alleged source. It is impossible to conclude that those practitioners are not a source of organs for transplants because of the number of executions where the number of executions is deduced from the number of transplants."

This is an important point, because it shows Falun Gong practitioners are another highly probable organ source.

1. Gresham's Law

Whether the organs actually come from executed prisoners or (at the same time or more) from Falun Gong practitioners, in view of the fact of the persecution of Falun Gong, Gresham's Law, a economic principle, can help us reach a more logical conclusion.

Gresham's law is commonly stated as, "Bad money drives good money out of circulation." A more correct rendering of Gresham's Law is that "Bad money drives out good if they exchange for the same price." This law was first formulated by Nicolaus Copernicus.

Gresham's Law says that if there are two types of money on the market--good money and bad money that have the same face value, people would usually choose to use the bad money in circulation and hold onto the good money, because the cost of the bad money is less. After a while, the good money would leave the market, and this is the logic behind the expression "bad money drives good money out of circulation." People would hold onto the good money and try to give the bad money to others.

2. Good People Demonised as "Bad Money"

During this persecution, Falun Gong practitioners, good people who follow "Truth-Compassion-Tolerance" were demonised and labelled "bad money." After decades of CCP atheist brainwashing, many people can no longer accept any belief based on the existence of God, as they have been taught to think of it all as feudalistic myths, for fools. The CCP's defamation of Falun Gong even labels practitioners as "suicidal," "murderers," "self-immolators" and as "psychotic." The propaganda has generated tremendous hatred of Falun Gong among the masses, who, victims of the overwhelming propaganda, are unable to form independent thoughts or concepts. Later, the CCP accused Falun Gong of "disrupting social order," of being an "anti-China force" and an "anti-revolutionary organisation," among other political labels, which fuel even more hatred.

Lawyers are banned from giving legal representation to Falun Gong practitioners, while police officers who violate Falun Gong practitioners' basic human rights, even torturing them to death or disability, go free. Falun Gong practitioners are forbidden to appeal; they are fired from jobs and expelled from schools. Not only do work places and government agencies attack Falun Gong, but the textbooks in elementary schools, middle schools and high schools include sections that blatantly demonise and slander Falun Gong. At labour camps and prisons, even prisoners on death row have superior status over incarcerated Falun Gong practitioners. These inmates are even ordered to monitor and torture Falun Gong practitioners. The Falun Gong practitioners have even less protection of the most fundamental human rights than death row inmates.

An inmate who is not a Falun Gong practitioner told me a story that left me an indelible mark on my heart. An older Falun Gong practitioner refused to give up his belief and held a hunger strike to protest the persecution. He was tossed out in the hallway. The guards walked about him back and forth as if he didn't exist. He curled into a ball and wasted away while people turned their backs. Several days later, all life finally left him and he was carried out and dumped. It was the end of a life! The coldness and contempt for life that CCP officials in this story emit virtually suffocated me.

Police beat to death a college student who forgot to bring his temporary residence permit with him. His death triggered a storm on the Internet during which waves of condemnation targeted the guilty police officers and the shelter system. This is merely one example of what this despotic regime is capable of, and sad as it is, there are even fewer voices heard that speak to the catastrophic massacre that affects millions of innocent Falun Gong practitioners in China. People don't believe the persecution is happening! Facing the charges of these live organ harvesting incidents, simply because the plaintiffs are presumed Falun Gong practitioners, many people blindly deny its existence without conducting any investigation. Their denial itself is the huge umbrella of protection under which the persecution is able to exist and continue.

Falun Gong practitioners are deprived of their basic human rights; good people are pushed down to the rock bottom of society. The CCP smeared and distorted good people's reputations as "bad money." In the CCP's eyes, their lives are totally worthless.

Yet, when the CCP officials realised that selling practitioners' organs could bring tremendous wealth, an even more horrifying disaster began.

3. "Cost" of Executed Prisoners' Organs

Regarding the taking organs from the death row inmates, firstly, according to the CCP's "Temporary Regulation on the Utilisation of Executed Prisoners' Bodies and Organs," only "those whose bodies are not claimed, whose families refuse to take it, when the death row inmates are willing [to donate their organs] or their families agree for their organs to be used--these bodies and organs can be utilised." Although the CCP actually does not follow its own regulation, this rule still exists and it has potential to make trouble to them. Secondly, the CCP is under great pressure from the international community for using death row inmates' organs. The CCP has always been condemned for taking prisoners' organs without consent. Thirdly, there have been several media reports of executed prisoners' families suing the government for stealing organs. In other words, compared to "worthless" Falun Gong practitioners, the cost of the organs from executed prisoners who are regarded as "good money" is much higher.

4. From Death Row Inmates to Falun Gong Practitioners

In contrast, the CCP found that harvesting organs from Falun Gong practitioners is more convenient and safer. The organs are taken directly from living bodies. The success rate of any organ transplant depends on the quality of organs and the interval of time between cutting off blood circulation and the transplant surgery itself. The CCP butchers discovered that harvesting organs from living Falun Gong practitioners solves both problems completely.

Gresham's "bad money drives out good money" principle is thus at work here. In this case, the "bad money" presents a higher market value than "good money." Harvesting organs from live bodies, something that rarely happens in the case of prisoners to be executed, has been happening to many, many young and healthy Falun Gong practitioners during the CCP's inhumane persecution of Falun Gong.

As we learnt from the recorded telephone conversations listed in the Canadian report, one noteworthy phenomenon is that the doctors don't mind too much when they mention harvesting organs from living Falun Gong practitioners, because they really do not consider it a crime to kill a Falun Gong practitioner. In their minds, it is "making some waste valuable" out of a "worthless class enemy."Actually, the number of executed prisoners is no longer the issue. That is another matter and doesn't have too much to do with harvesting organs from living Falun Gong practitioners. Although we believe that the death row prisoners' organs are one source, the CCP, nevertheless, is using Falun Gong practitioners as a "better" organ source. According to Gresham's Law, it is highly likely that the Falun Gong practitioners have become the main sacrifice in the Chinese organ market over the past few years.