Mobile Execution Vans?

Have some more yellow wine, she said.

Oh, no, I said. I don't want to wreck my liver.

Why didn't I listen?

What's a Mobile Execution Van? A soccer mom having a few Margaritas at her son's game and then driving home? No, it's latest fad from those crazy human-rights abusers the Chinese!

China in recent years has introduced mobile execution vans and lethal
injection, supplanting the traditional method of a bullet to the back of the head. While Beijing has touted these as more humane, critics say the changes facilitate rapid organ transfers.

Now far be it from me to defend a country that beats dogs to death in the streets, but I must say I applaud the recycling efforts of a country who takes the organs of death-penalty deadbeats (ok, political dissenters) and gives them to needy (ok, rich foreigners) by driving around in "Mobile Execution Vans".

BEIJING
-- After years of denial, China has acknowledged that many of the human organs used in transplants here are taken from executed prisoners and that many of the recipients are foreigners who pay hefty sums to avoid a long wait.Speaking at a conference of surgeons in the southern city of Guangzhou, Deputy Health Minister Huang Jiefu called for a strict code of conduct and better record keeping to stem China's thriving illegal-organ trade, state media reported.

Acknowledgment of what had been an open secret on the Internet, in local magazines and among people waiting for transplanted organs came weeks after China announced tighter oversight of death-penalty cases. Legal experts say requiring the country's highest court to approve death sentences could reduce the number by a third.

While China doesn't disclose the number of people executed each year,
Amnesty International reports that at least 1,770 people were put to death in 2005, based on a review of Chinese media reports. Some activists say the annual figure could be as high as 10,000.Even the lower estimate represents more than 80 percent of the 2,148 executions reported to have taken place worldwide last year. The United States executed 60 prisoners in 2005.

Sure, some crimes carrying the death penalty might be simply "having AB blood", but it takes bold pioneers like the Chinese to start a discourse on our own unfair system of organ donation registry. People here move to other states to get on different waiting lists. Can we blame them for surfing eBay in search of a kidney?

And don't you just love hearing Chinese officials announce all the things that are 'strictly forbidden'? I thought our lawmakers were hypocrites. Again, we could learn much from our neighbors to the East...