They admitted to having used organs from prisoners with relatively "valid" death sentence in so far that there is any such thing as a fair trial in China.
What is alleged here is much worse: Prisoners of Conscience (and not drug traffickers or murderers) are particularly selected for their histocompatibility and executed "on demand".
Therefor I think these allegations need further proof. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and that's why I suggest a cautious approach to this story.
Doesn’t one lead to the other? I mean, that is why organ harvesting of condemned prisoners is so distasteful in the first place: it creates a huge conflict of interest in the dispensing of justice.
Not necessarily. For one thing it depends on consent. There is nothing wrong with a condemned person to consent to organ donation, if there is meaningful consent to be had.
One would think that even China has some compunctions about "creating" capital crimes in order to have enough organ donors. One of the problems with the underlying story is that the non-consenting donors must have been killed somewhat "extrajudiciarily", that is, outside of the "normal" way death sentences have been administered in China.
Therefore the allegations point to an industrial scale process of matching living prisoners to organ recipients, and lacking a judicial death sentence.
I'd say it is possibly if there are no consequences to the decision, and the condemned prisoner has trust in that situation. It's hard to construct such a scenario.
I am completely against the death penalty, in all circumstances.
I still believe that the allegations against China made here are orders of magnitude worse than "just" harvesting organs from executed donors. That would be mainly a violation of the victims post-mortem rights or dignity.
The alleged practice involves doctors and hospitals cooperating in the preparation and execution of the death penalty. That is a fundamental violation of medical ethics. In the US, doctors are forbidden to participate in executions.
And apparently at least the timing of the executions in China, if not even the decision whether to execute a prisoner or not, seems to be affected by the demand for organs.
It's always hard to make a judgement about what wrong is worse, but I'd say here we have a clear "winner".
What is alleged here is much worse: Prisoners of Conscience (and not drug traffickers or murderers) are particularly selected for their histocompatibility and executed "on demand".
Therefor I think these allegations need further proof. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and that's why I suggest a cautious approach to this story.