July 10, 2019 • 52 mins
Until the day we're able to manufacture affordable, reliable organs from scratch, organ transplants will remain the only hope for millions of sick and dying people across the planet. For this reason, organs have been a big business for decades -- and not all aspects of the business are legal. For years rumors have been brewing about the organ trade in China. Why is the waiting time for a transplant so low? Where are all these organs actually coming from? The answer may terrify you. Strap in as the guys dive into the stuff China doesn't want you to know about the organ trade.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Gradios How Stuff Works. Welcome back
(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt, my name is
they call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Paul, Mission controlled dec and most importantly,
you are you. You are here and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know. How are you doing? Guys?
Everybody got their kidneys, their important bits still attached within
or adjacent to them. God, I hope so as far
(00:45):
as I can tell, you know, I really just kind
of push in and I feel like it's there. Did
you all ever have your appendix taken out or your
tonsils removed? I have never had any form of invasive
surgery at all, and it frankly terrifies me. Same actually
no wisdom teeth. I've been putting that off. Actually they've
told me for years that I need to get them out.
(01:06):
I haven't done it yet because it freaks me out.
I think maybe the emotional distress beforehand and going right
in is is probably worse thing. Yeah, just suck it
up and be a man and do it. Oh, I
don't know, it's psych it up. Maybe you'll feel better,
maybe not. It's one of those things you can put
off until your mouth starts hurt. Any you've you've had
like at least one thing right where you've had to
(01:27):
go under, do you recall it, Like? What was it like?
Was that experience like for me? Great? Honestly, honestly, I've
had I've had a number of operations that were not
related to one another, and in each case things went swimmingly.
And you know, you lose time you go under. You
(01:50):
wake up and you're fine, or you feel fine, you're
probably really high. So I remember when I had my
wisdom teeth taken out. I cannot remember which year this was,
but it was definitely in the US, after the country
was formed, and and uh, I thought I was I
thought I was fine, And I didn't understand why you can't.
(02:12):
You're not allowed to know, operate a heavy machinery, drive
a car, flat helicopter, whatever your method of transportation is.
And so I thought it was fine until I walked
out of the dentist office and then stumbled and sat
on the steps and thought I'm gonna be here for
a while to get a ride though you just you
just do You didn't go for that, No, I I
lied about it. But it is a moment of being conscious,
(02:37):
then you're not aware of anything, and then you come
back all of a sudden, Well there's a fade. I
think you know, the feeling of falling asleep, but it's
a precipitous drop off, so it feels like maybe you're
about to doze, and then you wake up usually now.
Interestingly enough, there are some genetic markers that show anesthesia
(02:58):
affects people in markedly, markedly different ways. For example, people
who have the redhead gene, you and I for exampia. Uh,
we we have the potential to require more anesthesia than
the average person. But I don't know, I don't know
what what the correlation is there. Do you have to
(03:21):
be full redhead or do you have to be what
South Park we call a day walker? If you guys
remember that, so I am very I'm very glad to
hear that you guys have not had terrible surgical experiences,
and luckily in this country, at least in the United States,
for those who can afford to pay the tab the
(03:42):
surgery or the surgical environment rather is not as fatal
as at once. What's and it used to be an
absolute abatois, But we want to hear your weirdest, uh,
your weirdest surgery experiences. When we start that way, you
can pause the podcast at any point and call us
the directly. We are one eight three three s T
(04:03):
D W y t K. Leave a message. You get
three minutes. If you can't fit it in, then that
amount of time just to call back. And as always,
let us know if you do not want this to
be on air, If this is just for us a
mission control, that's fine, just be very clear about that.
So we are talking about surgery today. We are talking
(04:23):
about one of the most controversial types of surgery, which
is the replacement or transplant of organs, the organ trade,
the organ trail, I think is the worst joke we
made in a previous episode about this. Here here's the problem.
Until we as a species learn how to reliably grow
(04:45):
new organs from scratch, millions of people across the planet
are dying and are going to die as they wait
for viable replacement organs and donors. At least it is
according to the official story into a show. We're exploring
a dark corner of an already very murky trade, the
(05:05):
semi legal or completely illegal industry, known to some as
the red market. And we we have some previous stuff
on this the red Market. We got the title from this,
this fantastic book that looks at the semi legal and
illegal oregan trade. The red market is not is not
related to legitimate organ transplant or donation processes. The way
(05:30):
the legit stuff works in most countries is the following process.
Somebody opts in to donate an organ, usually upon their death.
If you're in the US and you get a driver's license,
you get that question, do you agree to be an
organ donor? In some states you get a discount if
you agree to be an organ donor? Right, but after,
(05:51):
let's say something tragic happens when dies in a car accident,
right or they have a they have a heart attack. Oh,
we should mention that too many people have the miskans
sception that if you sign up to be an organ
donor on your driver's license, it only applies to auto accidents.
It does not you go down for any reason. Uh,
and you've got viable organs boom boom boom there as
(06:12):
long as you didn't explode or die of you know,
poison or a terrible disease. I don't know why people
would think that that's interesting. Um, yeah, I always assumed
it was. You know, for all intents and purposes, these
organs belong to the people. It's very strange, you know,
with the idea that someone someone would say, well, my
kidneys are still going to be mine because I tripped
and fell or something like that. It's strange. But maybe
(06:35):
it's a comforting thing because our organs are very personal
parts of ourselves and our identities. But this also is
an important point. Today's topic is about a system of
government that does not have such safeguards in place. We
get to check a box on a card that says
we choose to donate our organs. That is not the
case with today's episode. It's certainly more complicated than that. Yeah,
(06:57):
in some cases, just just for a full clid text here.
In some cases there are countries that will require you
to opt out of being an organ donor. With some
European countries recently did that. I have no problem with that. Well,
it's a it's a psychological move because it massively increases
the number of people who become organ donors, not because
(07:18):
of informed consent. It's because they didn't read the entire thing,
which is weird. I can't think of any reason why
you wouldn't want to be an organ donor. For most people,
it's religious. Yeah, for most people it's religious, or you know,
it goes into the method of burial or uh, you
know what's cremation creation, perhaps burial, let's sea or you know,
(07:42):
you can't be embalmed things like that. It's it's along
the same list. The Red Market, however, is in news
much more recently now. You can even you you've probably
seen this popping up in your news feed whatever, your
news feed of choices today while we're recording this. Yes, yes,
it was on the front page of Reddit today. As
(08:04):
we go in, this story takes us to the red
market in the People's Republic of China. So here are
the facts about China's official oregan donation system. Yeah, they
certainly have one of the largest transplant programs in the
entire world, and a lot of that is just a
factor of the number of human beings that exist within China.
(08:27):
But we do have some numbers about estimates that come
officially from the Chinese government, and these go back to
two thousand four, this first one, right in two thousand four,
they estimated that over thirteen thousand transplants were performed, and
then in two thousand six they estimated that as many
as twenty thousand transplants had been performed. And remember those
are official estimates from the government, and though, and that's
(08:50):
way back in two thousand four, two thousand six, and
you can only imagine that as population has grown over time,
those numbers have risen tremendously. Well, you can see, you
can see it almost bubbles across two years, even officially.
And that's that's something else. You would think, with so
many people waiting in line for an organ, that the
waiting time would would be a matter of years, right,
(09:13):
and you're sort of racing the clock of your body's
decay and the availability of an organ donor of some sort.
But here's the thing. The waiting time for an organ
transplant in China is cartoonishly low. It is by far
the lowest amount of waiting time on the planet. As
often organ tourists o r g A and tourist, which
(09:36):
is a thing reported receiving kidney transplants within days of
arriving in the country. Days You can tell people what
organ uh what oregan tourists are just simple as it is,
traveling to another country to obtain an organ that you
can't because you're on a waiting list perhaps in your
own country, or it would cost too much, there was
some preventive reason that you cannot get an organ in
(09:58):
your home country. Right, it's this city. It's it's a
subset of medical tourism because the United States has is
home to quite a few medical tours who are going
out of necessity. You know this, This country has great
specialized health care for those who can afford it, but
an operation that may cost tens of thousands of dollars
(10:19):
here may cost you know, much less just in Canada
or Mexico. So, I mean, this problem is not reported
as much as it should be in the US because
I think it gets wrapped up in uh politicized conversations,
especially during election cycles. And we're sort of always in
(10:39):
an election cycle now. But can you imagine you need
a kidney You can wait what three to five years
maybe more here in the US, or you can fly
to China pay pay more, maybe than you would for
the kidney itself, but you know, within a week or
two your your parts have been replaced, like the six
(11:01):
million dollar man. There was a report produced by these researchers,
David Maddison David Kilgore, which cited the China International Transplantation
Assistance Center as saying, again this is the actual official
source quote, it may only take one week to find
the suitable donor, the maximum time being one month. WHOA again,
(11:25):
let's compare that to other countries. Okay, So to do that,
we have to look at the median waiting times for
an organ transplantation UH in somewhere like Australia, which is,
for example, six months to four years. Canada you're looking
at six years, that says eleven and in the UK
it's three years. China UM swears up and down that
(11:49):
it sticks to these international standards. These medical standards require
organ donations to be done by consent and without any
UM users financial charges. And on the surface, that's seems legit,
I guess right, but there's a lot more at play here.
On the first glance, people are saving lives. It's hard
to argue that that's a bad thing. But let's let's
(12:09):
let's slow our role a little bit real quick, and
let's look at where this extraordinary speed comes from. It
ain't for free, right right, And I love that you're
pointing out the the idea of informed consent and not
having financial charges. Longtime listeners will remember we looked at
the uh just repugnant practice of some some unethical organ
(12:34):
procurers in the Indian subcontinent where they'll pay somebody what
the equivalent of a couple hundred bucks to take their kidney,
and then they'll jack up the price the thousands and thousands.
You can see entire villages of people who all have
the same identical scar on their left or right side.
So if you find someone who is in dire financial
(12:55):
straits and you offer them a little bit of cash,
it's not really informed scent. And as you said, there
is a price to this extraordinary speed. First, as as
you pointed out, Matt, the official numbers from the government
do not match with the estimates from international organizations. A
study in the Journal Clinical Transplantation said that only four
(13:16):
percent of oregan transplant experts believed procurement processes in China
were ethically sound, so they asked do you think the
government is telling you the truth about this? Do you
think they're on the up and up? And four percent
of people said yeah, sure, I don't know. I wonder
if that this is just my It was like it's
(13:38):
like weird skeptical anti skeptical thing where it's like, I
wonder how many of those people were just like why
there's no way for me to tell so I can't
say yes. Well, I mean it goes back to that
old expression about you know products. For example, you can
have something fast, you can have something cheap, you're gonna
have something good. You can have two of them at
the same time, but you definitely can't have all three
of them at the same time. And this Chinese system
(13:59):
see us to purport that you get all three. And
that is when you're being sold of a bill of
goods typically, right. I always wonder where that statement comes from,
always think about that earlier. I haven't looked it up yet,
but when someone sold a bill of goods, what does
that mean? Well, this has come up before and I
feel like we found out the answer, But now I
think I think what it had to do with like
a bill of goods is like a shipping list of
(14:19):
like stuff that would be in the hull of a ship.
And I think sometimes if you're sold a bill of goods,
it implies that you're being sold the promise of something,
but not the thing itself. There we go, well, put, okay,
that makes sense. So there's another factor here. The World
Health Organization or WHO, which is again the coolest initialism
out there, has figures suggesting that around ten percent of
(14:42):
transplants in this country occurred via transplant tourism in at
least in two thousand and five, and China was the
leading destination for patients out of all the other countries
in the world. Second, when health officials in China launched
a now shoal donation system in two thousand and nine,
(15:02):
the government itself reported that two thirds of organ donors
could be traced to one demographic and one demographic alone
prisoners who were executed in the Chinese incarceration system. And
that's the official number. That's the official number. It's a
little bit north of sixty. And we must keep in
(15:23):
mind again international experts have been claiming these numbers are
ginned up in lobald for years. The authorities had previously
acknowledged that Cornea's kidneys and other body parts come from
criminals and that they've been successfully transplanted. But this was
the first official acknowledgement of the extent of this practice.
(15:43):
When they said, oh, well, we said sometimes in the
nineteen seventies, they didn't admit it in the seven It
was happening in the seventies of but it wasn't admitted
to uh, they said, when we said sometimes, we meant
two thirds at the time, which is still not all
the time. So it's sometimes. But if when you're saying
two thirds of even the official numbers that are low balled,
you're talking thousands of people. And here's why they created
(16:05):
the system. They were hoping that this new plan would
tackle the thriving black market in body parts and encourage
voluntary donation, which you know, as we mentioned it, it
remains far below demand in the country, partially due to
social taboos and mores and partially due to some religious reasons. Interesting,
(16:26):
so it is largely designed for this medical tourism. It's
this system is officially supposed to encourage more people to
be donors, but the system, the way it functions, yes,
does appear it is very it's a very long reach.
(16:46):
It's a walk around a long block to say that
this is not purposely designed for Oregon tourism. We're gonna
get deeper into the deeds behind that. Yeah, unfortunately, we
will as strap in, folks, hold your kidneys, your heart,
your corny, as your liver close, because we're going in
the state. Newspaper China Daily said about one million people
(17:07):
needed transplants each year, but only one received them, and
at the time, the Vice Minister for Health in China,
Huang Jifu said, transplants, this is a quote. Transplants should
not be a privilege for the rich. And uh, he
said that there were these you know, whenever a condemned
to prisoner was going to be donating their organ there
(17:29):
was written consent that was required to be taken from
them or or acquired by from them. And he added
that they were definitely not a proper source for organ transplants.
So that's interesting. Uh, the the vice Minister for Health
in China saying that that the prisoners condemned to death
(17:50):
prisoners were not a proper source for organ transplants. He
also ended up telling a newspaper outlet or you know,
a media outlet China Daily that somehow spitals actually ignored
the rules because of the high profits that they could
acquire by doing things a different way, right, and the
newspaper said that there were experts. Experts they're the estimated
that more than sixty percent of donors were actually criminals
(18:14):
who had received the death penalty. So again the two
thirds number of pops up in a couple of different sources.
What's interesting is that years earlier, the government ruled the
organs from executed prisoners would only be given to family members,
and that living donors could only give body parts to
relatives or to those with whom they shared A quote
(18:34):
emotional connection that sounds like, well, think about like you
have a you have a relative or something that well
this is let me let me compare it this way.
You have an in law maybe and you, unlike all
the stereotypical jokes, you love your father in law, your
mother in law, and you're a donor match. So you
say I want to give them my kidney, and they
(18:54):
say you're not They're not kind, they're not really a
biological family members. You can you can claim that you
can you get to define the emotional connection yeah, yeah,
I would be able to. I am going to give
ban my kidney because I love him. Thank you, thank you,
and uh that's that's true. And all you have a
you have a good heart. I don't know where you
got if you can't have it, though, I don't want
to know. I'm talking about the other one. But how
(19:17):
are those kidneys doing? Are they okay? They're a little
I comed them up a little bit, road harder put
away a way. Uh yeah, it's it's true. Emotional connection
gives you some leeway, you know, some ownership over where
you want your body parts to go. In theory, the
percentage of transplants from living donors has risen from fifteen
(19:38):
percent two thousand and six to in two thousand and nine,
and it seems to continue ticking up, which is a problem.
According to a professor Chen Jong Hwa in the Institute
of Organ Transplantation at tongues You a hospital, only one
hundred and thirty people on the main land of China,
(20:00):
which has a population of one point three billion again
had signed up to donate their organs after they died.
Only one hundred and thirty out of more than a billion.
That's how few people that's that's how passionate people are
about keeping their organs after death. And to be fair, though,
that was in two thousand three, um, fairly early on
(20:22):
in that process, or at least earlier, right, right, So
the numbers today are kind of tricky. You can find
sources that will that's the thing. It's tough to find
official sources that will say numbers that transparently. So we
have to rely upon in country experts or people with experience,
which means that we're also we're also possibly reading their agenda,
(20:47):
which goes, aren't we always though? I don't know? Yeah, yeah,
maybe maybe, maybe you're right. So these stories of foreigners
traveling to China just for organ transplants for were rife.
They were rumors for a long time, but when China
Daily was reporting on this, they added a little bit
(21:07):
more fuel to the fire and they said that there
was an entire industry of middlemen who specialized in faking
documents to evade the law. And faking a document could
be everything from your official purpose to China if you
want to hide that fact, to a fake consent form
when they say, okay, well you know this person just
(21:30):
signed this document and then they said it's fine. They
said you're a loved one, They said, you have an
emotional connection. At the time, citizens could pay up to
two thousand yuan for a kidney. That was a little
under twenty thousand pounds, so excessive excess of for a
(21:51):
kidney in the US at those prices, right, the US dollars.
And then we have a new development you mentioned earlier.
Matt Hauling Jaffou, the former minister. In February he said
he was retired. He said that from January one, organ
(22:12):
donation from voluntary civilian organ donors has become the only
legitimate source of transplantation. And people interpreted this as a
ban on the use of organs from executed prisoners. So
no more, yeah, he said the he said, it's the
only legitimate source. Right, It's like the pursuit of happiness. Yeah,
(22:38):
So the piece isn't he the guy that also said
that it shouldn't be a privilege just for the rich guy.
So here's the thing. I mean, you can say stuff
like that all day long, and you can try to
put safeguards in place, but when it comes to something
so scarce, anything that that you know, thrives on scarcity,
it's always going to become a market like that that
favors the rich, because that's just how it is. That's
(23:01):
how people work, that's how money works, and these systems work.
So it's one thing for him to say that, But
how can you really, you know, put an end to
that human need of like, well, I have more money,
therefore I deserve to get better treatment. I deserve to
get like first in line or whatever to live exactly. Yeah,
I agree, economy is the dominant religious paradigm of this age.
(23:25):
And these are the effects that happen when you know
you have zealous people participating in a religion. If you
think the economy is not a religion, I would love
to hear your argument. Why tell me why they differ?
There you go, that's I don't know. You know, I'm
not going to say it's a hill I'll die on.
But we've asked this question before and there there aren't
that many differences. And this is not a ding on religion.
(23:48):
It's not ding on economy, but the belief that things
should be determined by these sorts of economic systems. But
we're all playing this guy in a nice game when
we say that they're different It's sort of like the
old thing about how ridiculous it will look to future
historians when we think about driving on the inter state.
(24:08):
You know, we were in these death machines that went
in excess of eighty miles an hour. How did you
not hit each other? How did you not kill each other?
We did all the time, But there were lines, We
had these, this honor system of painted lines. Oh did
the lines stop? You know? No, you just you kind
of agreed that these other strangers piloting their own death
machines would also adhere to the honor system of the line.
(24:31):
When you put it like that, and be really scared
to drive because nobody follows the honor system. I don't
know if you guys have been driving around in Atlanta,
Holy Lord, and you know that same idea applies to this.
Nobody followed this on our system either didn't right, the
money gets too good, the pieces come together. So with
just this high level look, we can already see some
(24:53):
issues the official government statements are not jibing with statements
from NGOs and other international institutions. We can also see,
as you pointed out, all the huge economic incentive for
cheating the system, and then There's another question where exactly
are all these organs coming from? Most importantly, what if
(25:15):
the government of China never stopped getting organs from executive prisoners.
Even more disturbingly, what if the government of China is
no longer waiting for these prisoners to die? Oh guess what,
it's time for a sponsor break. After that, monsters, here's
(25:44):
where it gets crazy. That's right, that's right, conspiracy realist,
you did not misshear us. We are talking about on
demand executions. Rumors about executions for the express purposes of
harvesting organs have dogged the Chinese government for decades. Decades
and decades back to I think the earliest reports are
(26:05):
in the nineteen seventies, but they existed for a long
time on the fringe of mainstream debate. This recently changed.
An independent tribunal seated in London was assembled to investigate
the truth, if any, about this countrywide conspiracy to execute
people and harvest their organs. Is called the Independent Tribunal
(26:25):
Enforced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscious in China, and
it reached some ugly, ugly conclusions. We do have to
say this is technically an in GEO and non governmental organization.
That's one of the main objections China has with it.
So there was an interim judgment that was released in
December of that stated that, beyond a doubt, forced oregan
(26:48):
harvesting from prisoners has taken place quote on a substantial
scale by state support or approved organizations and individuals. And
then further um noted that the findings were indicative of
essentially genocide. Um though it was not clear enough to
make a positive ruling. Right, And so some people may
(27:08):
say genocide, guys, isn't that a bit alarmist? Let's let's
remember what genocide is. Genocide is the eradication of a
large group of people, especially from a particular ethnic group
or a nation, or in some cases religion of religion. Right,
(27:28):
So this is don't have any of that here, though,
do we even? I mean, we don't don't see any
of those Oh wait, we do, don't we? Which one
that one of those groups is involved? Here? Oh? Yes, yes,
that's absolutely right. Yeah, I thought you here is in
the US. No. No, I just meant, like, you know,
I mean, it sounds to me like they're saying genocide.
That's a real buzzy term. We need a little bit more,
you know, proof that this is happening, like in order
(27:50):
we need like a target of said genocide. Right, the
following going, Yeah, So the following going, which you have
probably heard about before on our show or in any
international news is it translates the title translates to dharma
wheel practice or law wheel practice. It's a Chinese spiritual
(28:10):
movement that combines chigong and meditation with this moral philosophy.
So it's kind of like a religion. It's safe to
say most people when they hear about it, they would
interpret it as a religion because the ultimate goal is
the idea of enlightenment on a spiritual level. It was
started in so it's very it's very young. Initially the
(28:34):
Chinese officials and the Communist Party thought that, you know,
they supported it, right, but because of its size, because
of its independence from the state and it's emphasis on
spiritual teaching, it was seen as something like it's a
good way, a possible security risk, or a secessionist movement maybe,
(28:58):
and it was officially in at several times throughout history.
Now it's been labeled as a cult, an evil cult,
a dangerous group, like all these things by by the
Chinese government. Well, have you guys ever seen the chin
Yunu posters and billboards ads that are like everywhere this
aerial acrobat China organization. Yeah, well it's like a traveling
(29:19):
show or whatever. Right, Uh, they practice Fallonong. I mean,
it's become a joke like that show is so prevalent
any city you're in, you're gonna see them on bill
bulletin boards and you know, busses and everything. It's like
a very popular show. But yes, they are practitioners of Fallonong.
Interesting and in two thousand and six, official allegations emerged
that a large number of Follongong practitioners have been killed
(29:41):
to supply the oregan transplant industry in China. Uh and
these came from those uh, those earlier writers we had mentioned,
David Kilgore, former Canadian Secretary of State, and David Mantas,
who's a human rights lawyer. The problem, of course, spoiler alert.
China denies all of this, and recently this tribunal after
(30:04):
after their uh their statement in December in twenty nineteen,
the tribunal concluded that the killing of detainees in China
for organ transplants hasn't stopped, it is continuing, and though
Following Gong detainees might not be the only source of
these illegal organ harvesting operations, they are one of the
(30:27):
primary sources. And in a unanimous determination just this year,
they said that the evidence clearly indicated this forced organ
harvesting again, killing people, not because of what they did
to land in jail, but killing people because there's a
new order in for a hot off the cadaver kidney right,
(30:49):
And they said this had taken place for at least
two decades. They said there were certain the Following Gong
group was a source, probably the principal source of these
organs of According to a guy named Sir Jeffrey Nice,
who chaired the tribunal, he's a QC. The conclusion shows
that very many people have died in describably hideous deaths
(31:09):
for new reason, that more may suffer in similar ways,
and that all of us live on a planet where
extreme wickedness may be found in the power of those
for the time being running a country with one of
the oldest civilizations known to modern man. Continues to say
there is no evidence of the practice having been stopped,
and the tribunal is satisfied that it is continuing. No, really,
(31:30):
they're satisfied that it's continuing. No, it's British, British language,
we understand. But yeah, so they said, they said, this
is not a theory, right, this is not a rumor.
There's not a couple of isolated cases from the nineteen nineties.
This is happening. And it's like, we we can't we
(31:53):
can say it's indicative of genocide, even if we can't
conclusively say it's genocide, because that's sort of a United
Nations determine nation a lot of times. But they said,
you're killing people. Yeah, and there there are more details
to this situation, and it gets darker, and we're going
to cover that right after another word from our sponsor.
(32:18):
What's the creepy line from Willy Wonka, the gene Wilder
version where it gets really dark? Oh, no, that's what's
a where this is going. Yes, this is this is
that part. This is where we go deeper into the
(32:40):
tunnel here. Because although China again dismisses these claims as
politically motivated and untrue, even calling them propaganda, essentially, we
know that there there are numerous examples of what appears
to be first hand testimony from both following Gong members
and Weaker in eights in the in the concentration camps
(33:02):
in western China were being a religious group and also
like a race, right. Uh. Yeah, They're a ethnic minority
in China, and the majority, the ethnic majority in China
would be the Han. That we are are Muslim and
practicing Muslims. They've been in these so called education or
(33:23):
re education camps. The people are pro we grow activists
will say that the Han are forcibly assimilating them or
trying to wipe out their culture by putting them in
these camps and making them reject their religious their long
held religious practices. And if you want to learn more
about that, we have an entire episode on modern day
concentration camps. I believe that's called something similar to that.
(33:44):
You can learn about that right now. And I actually
I stumbled upon an article on news dot com dot
au and Australian site that went into some of the
conditions and some of these camps, and I mentioned to
Ben and Matt that I had watched a couple of
these videos, and Ben was surprised is that some of
the folks that gave their accounts were actually left alive,
because that is pretty uncommon, right relatively, so yeah, and
(34:08):
you know, and I'm not saying that this is completely
without you know, questionability, but there are some perspectives of
some folks that describe having blood forcibly drawn from their
arms and ear lobes, and the idea is that it
was to check the viability of their organs they were beaten.
But then that one gentleman who seems like he was
(34:28):
kind of railroaded because he described them kind of like
claiming to have found Falling Gong materials on his computer. Um,
but he did not purport to have been a member.
And so it almost feels like this is like a
thing they can use on people, you know, to like say, oh,
your enemy of the state because we found these materials
or whatever. It would always be suspicious if someone is
(34:50):
caught because of something quote unquote found on their computer.
Very so easy, so easy to plan and um stories
like that where then a actually after you know, beatings
where one gentleman overheard somebody guard saying be careful not
to damage his organs, you know, but like really really
brutal beatings, UM, and doctors not speaking to the individuals,
(35:14):
they would draw blood from them without saying, you know,
with repeated questions as to what they're doing, why they're
doing it, they wouldn't answer. Um. And yeah, it's like
basically these forced labor camps where people are pulled out
of line and kind of like taken to these these
medical facilities. And one person in particular that you know,
had a very similar or you know, the same experience
(35:34):
was a woman named Jennifer Zing who was a felon
gooing activist. She was imprisoned for only about a year
in a labor camp for women only. Uh and and
she has this quote that she should that she gave
to the Guardian. I'm just gonna read this. It says,
on the day we were transferred to the labor camp,
we were taken to a medical facility where we underwent
physical checkups. We were interrogated about what diseases we had,
(35:57):
and I told them I had hepatitis. The second time,
after about a month in the camp, everyone was handcuffed
and put into a van and taken to a huge
hospital that was a far more thorough physical checkup. We
were given X rays. On the third occasion in the camp,
they were drawing blood from us. We were all told
to line up in the corridor and the tests were given.
(36:19):
So it really does paint a picture of UM when
you were inside this labor camp as a you know,
a prisoner. Essentially, your health is very important to the
people who are keeping you there, and that is you know,
over all the episodes that we've done on you know,
we just did one on UH on prison healthcare. And
(36:41):
while this isn't the same thing, we're in a different country,
we're into different circumstances, but generally check that that number
of checkups and monitoring of health in a prison system,
I would say, is not UM standards, not at all,
and I mean not unless something really dire happens and
then you're admitted, and you know that's usually they don't
(37:03):
just say, hey, how are you doing? Can we check
up on you and make sure that you're feeling okay.
So here's the tricky part. Two. According to this tribunal's estimates,
as many as ninety thousand transplant operations are being conducted
a year out of this country, and that is a
much much higher figure than that given by official government
(37:24):
sources in China. But all of this evidence technically, all
of these eyewitness accounts, all of the all of the
testimony of former surgeons or soldiers, it's still legally is circumstantial.
And no one has there's a good article about this
a new scientists. No one has been able to directly
(37:44):
observe or prove that these transplant organs are still being
sourced from prisoners. Even if we have soldiers claiming that
they've seen live organ harvesting, there's no tape of this,
you know what I mean, there's knowing con revertible video proof.
And now the Chinese Embassy has commented on these claims
(38:08):
in a fairly categorical manner. As quoted in the Guardian,
the embassy said the Chinese government will always follow the
World Health Organization's guiding principles on human organ transplant and
its strengthened its management on organ transplant in recent years.
On March two thousand seven, the Chinese State Council enacted
the Regulation on Human Organ Transplant, providing that human organ
(38:30):
donation must be done voluntarily and gratis free of charge.
We hope that the British people will not be misled
by rumors because there's this, uh, there's this movement now
in the United Kingdom to ban people from traveling to
China for the purposes of medical tourism. That's how that's
how big the concern has become. Well, then, let's so
(38:52):
we already know that this is a big deal, right,
And we don't really have, as you said, been, any
kind of incontrovertible video evidence of this just occurring at
a labor camp over and over even one time. If
we did, then we could come right out and say that.
But we do have testimony of at least one person
that we found, uh who is said to have taken
(39:14):
part in taking organs out of a person who was
still alive, who had just been shot by authorities of
some sort. And he was a he was a medical professional. Right,
that's correct. So let's let's go to July. Go let's
go to Ireland where the Senate was meeting. They were
(39:34):
meeting with the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade
in Defense, and they were hearing evidence from experts about
specifically the organ harvesting or the alleged organ harvesting that
was going on in China. And there's a man named
Dr enver Toti. I believe that's correct. Um, he was
giving testimony about how he was quote led to perform
(39:54):
organ harvesting on a civilian in China, and this was
early on in his medical career. It was he said
that there were two chief surgeons who told him to
assemble a team. This is he's he's just being told
this assemble a team for the largest possible surgery the
following morning. So you know, again it's early in his career. Uh,
(40:17):
he's being told this by people who work for the government,
essentially in the medical system. Um, he ends up getting,
you know, gathering a team. They're brought outside of a
hospital and they're told to wait for the gun shots.
This is what he's giving testimony. You can watch a
video of him giving this testimony. Um, it's uh, it's
pretty crazy to to listen to it because this is
(40:41):
what he says. Then, after gunshots were her we rushed in.
An armed officer directed us to the far right corner
where I can see a civilian clothed man lying on
the ground with a single bullet wound to his right chest.
My chief surgeons ordered and guided me to extract the
liver and the two kidneys. The man was alive. He
tried to his this to my scalpel cut, but was
(41:01):
too weak to avoid my action. There was bleeding. He
was still alive and this yeah, and you know in
this article where you can find this. And during this
uh this uh this committee hearing, as as Dr Tody
is giving this, he's saying, every time I tell this story,
it feels like a confession. And then he goes on
(41:21):
to talk about how he felt like he was just
in that moment and in his career, he felt like
he was carrying out his duty for his country and
he was going to quote eliminate the enemy of the state. Right.
His story is fascinating. So Dr Emvert Tody is fifty
seven now he's an uber driver working in the UK,
(41:42):
but it was it was formerly a surgeon and he
was working in Romchi in northwest China when his boss
has asked him, quote, do you want to do something wild?
He was a young doctor at the time. He said yes,
and they drove him to the Western Mountain execute action grounds.
He saw around fifteen bodies on the mountain side, all
(42:02):
of which have been shot in the head. So this
may be a different I think, because the one we
just described, the guy was shot in the once in
the right side of his chest, right avoiding the heart.
Noticed that, uh. And when he when he was there,
he was ordered to cut deep and work fast on
a victim that he claimed had not been and esther
(42:23):
sized and who had been shot in the chest. So
it's the same it's the same guy. Uh. And this
guy like he still took organs out of the people
who have been shot in the head. But the the
guy who was shot in the chest, he knew, he
knew it was still alive because he was struggling and
there was still blood coming out of the cut, which
meant the heart was still pumping. And he was ordered
(42:47):
to remove the liver, both kidneys, so the body back
up and quote remember that today nothing happened. So he
has he still has PTSD from this and dedicates his
life to campaigning for awareness of the practice. That's that's
his that's his statement, and that's where we are today
with this. Make no mistake, China is home to a
(43:10):
massive organ trade. That that's not in question. The question
here is whether or not this trade is legal. What
is the provenance of these organs? Was the destination? What
is the economic uh fuel for this engine? Regardless of
which side you ask, you're going to find a conspiracy theory.
On one side, you'll find the Chinese government and officials
(43:31):
alleging and conspiracy on the part of other nations attempting
to discredit it, to attack it and vilify it on
the international stage. And they'll point out this is true.
They'll point out that these are in g o s
often right on the other side well, and sometimes have
meddled before absolutely as outside organizations. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, that's
(43:54):
unfortunately a tale as old as modern time. On the
other side, international investigations and several other countries, primarily countries
in the West, allege the government of China itself is
involved in a conspiracy to supply cheap organs by executing
marginalized members of society and maybe even sometimes arresting them
(44:14):
when oregan demand gets high enough and they need more bodies,
bodies in the cells or on the shooting grounds. To
be fair, though, no government is actually monolithic and no
government is uniform, so it's entirely possible that corrupt factions
in the government are supporting this illegal practice while other
factions fight against it, you know what I mean. Someone
(44:36):
there might be a caball of people in northwestern China
who are making money on the side in an in
an underground operation, like the people in charge of a prison,
right are making money by just letting the bodies disappear
for a second after execution on their way to wherever
their final resting place will be. And then the doctors
(44:58):
might be making money on the side, and and the
regional officials or the local government in the area might
be making money by turning a blind eye. Uh. This
this is how a lot of these things work. This
is this would be categorized as true crime. We cannot
escape the fact that there is a profound amount of
money involved on on either side, the legal trade and
(45:21):
the illegal trade. And so now we have to ask
which side do you believe and why Propaganda is a
huge business too. It's you would you might be surprised,
but it's it's similar to the Oregon trade in that
there's a there are lives on the line, just not
as directly, and it's just called public relations now. It's
just called public relations now. So it is completely possible
(45:45):
for some stories to be circulated, especially when there's a
language barrier or state control of media, and for those
stories to appear realistic but then later turn out to
be propaganda, like that Nurse Narayah story infamous, which is
pretty much made up about the children being pulled out
at incubators, or like the stories that chose on Elbow
(46:09):
will run sometimes that are anti d p r K.
And let me very clear, I am not defending that country.
I'm just saying that propaganda exist. So do you think
this is propaganda? Do you think this is a system
of murder to sell organs or is this something in between?
Is it a few bad actors or is it something
(46:31):
that is just growing now and has been growing, something
that will continue across the planet as resources continue to
get scarce and humans continue to be less and less valued.
I will tell you one thing I did. I can't
say that I fully believe that this is happening, um,
just because, like you said, been early early on in
(46:53):
this the numbers are so opaque, We know so very little.
If that does lead my conspiratorial brain or side of
me to say, well, they're probably hiding something, but I
have a hard time fully believing it. But what I
what I can say is that it terrifies me that
a lot of human beings, these days, are walking around
(47:14):
giving all of their health information to some third party
app or something on their phone, or we're all you know,
we're all tracking our biometrics, or many of us are,
even if we don't even realize it. In the same
way that these prisoners are being checked up on all
the time to make sure their their blood is good,
to make sure their organs are functioning correctly. In a
(47:35):
similar way, we're kind of doing the same thing, but
we're collecting it for some corporation out there that's going
to be to have all of our information at some
point when when the people with the money need our organs.
You know what I'm saying, guys, Jeez, Matt, that's why,
that's why you have the party gather you why you
(47:56):
may just drink as much as possible to make sure
that livers not ready to burn the village to save
the village, you know what I mean? Wow, that I'm sorry.
I did not mean for that to be that dark. Okay,
that is that is a horrific quote that is attributed
to the US military's legal actions during the Vietnam War.
There you go, h and we want to hear. We
(48:18):
want to hear your opinion upon this because it touches
on many many things. You can tell us about your
strange experiences with surgery in your neck of the Global Woods,
tell us about your experience with Oregon transplants. And also,
you know, maybe there's a little bit too much of
a door to open here, but what what do you
think about the current state of US healthcare, which we
(48:42):
briefly mentioned here? Do you do feel the free market
is best? Do you do you think that? Uh? Do
you think that people should die of curable conditions and
diseases due to you know, financial concerns? I hope not. Well,
I mean I want to I want to hear what
people think. That's good. Yeah, you're right, you can. You
(49:03):
can tell us about all this and more. Most importantly,
you are our favorite part of this show, specifically you're listening,
so we would always love to hear topics that you
think would fascinate your fellow listeners. And we have a
ton of ways that you can contact us. One of
the best ones is to head over to Facebook and
join our special group, our private group called Here's where
(49:26):
it gets crazy. You have to say who are the
hosts are of the show. But if you get just
one I think even Okay, well, if you get one right,
that's perfect. If you mentioned Mission Control, Mr poll d
over there, that's good. I just saw one where somebody
called Ben ben Brolin, which I really like. Thanks guys. Well,
and you know there's Sunny D and Polly D right,
(49:47):
and I'm Polly Walnuts that's right, or mentioned Badgers. We've
we had a couple of really just make us laugh,
you know, we're in it's it's a crazy year and
things are just gonna get stranger before they level out.
And you can also find us on Twitter where we're
conspiracy stuff. On Facebook regular were conspiracy stuff, and on
(50:10):
Instagram were conspiracy stuff show. And you guys have some handles, Yeah,
you can. You can see very until I get disappeared
at some point. You can find various global misadventures at
Ben Boling My My misadventures mainly stay relegated to the
continental United States, but you can find those at how
(50:32):
Now Noel Brown and mine. I have one that I
just haven't put anything on yet. It's just sitting there
and I think I'm only I think I'm only friends.
What do you call it when Instagram followers, I'm only
following my wife right now, which I probably shouldn't if
it's gonna be official account. I don't know how these
things work anyway. Uh, let's move on. You're adorable. I
(50:52):
do want to give one shout out though, to some
folks on our Facebook page. Here's where he gets crazy,
who are telling us that are new email address was
getting kicked back to them. We used to be conspiracy
at how stuff works dot com, but we changed that.
We changed that to a different address, which will will
give at the end of the show, and we're we're
(51:14):
checking on it to make sure it works. So if
you if you feel like you've emailed us and it's
not getting to us, then send us. Contact us one
of those other ways. Uh, there's another way we mentioned
at the top of the show. You can you can
call us. We're one eight three three st d w
y t K. Give us a call, leave us a
message again, all the other rules apply. Make us laugh
(51:35):
is the best. But tell us what you want us
to talk about. Tell us what you're doing dreams. Yeah,
how do you listen to the show with just some
silly thing that we can talk about? Your blood type,
your social Security number, a list of your fears. Also
if you if you don't like any of that, if
that's not quite bad in your badgers. We do have
an email address. Uh, go ahead and drop us a line.
(51:57):
We are conspiracy at i heeart radio dot com. Yeah.
(52:18):
Stuff they don't want you to Know is a production
of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Gradios How Stuff Works. Welcome back
(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt, my name is
they call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Paul, Mission controlled dec and most importantly,
you are you. You are here and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know. How are you doing? Guys?
Everybody got their kidneys, their important bits still attached within
or adjacent to them. God, I hope so as far
(00:45):
as I can tell, you know, I really just kind
of push in and I feel like it's there. Did
you all ever have your appendix taken out or your
tonsils removed? I have never had any form of invasive
surgery at all, and it frankly terrifies me. Same actually
no wisdom teeth. I've been putting that off. Actually they've
told me for years that I need to get them out.
(01:06):
I haven't done it yet because it freaks me out.
I think maybe the emotional distress beforehand and going right
in is is probably worse thing. Yeah, just suck it
up and be a man and do it. Oh, I
don't know, it's psych it up. Maybe you'll feel better,
maybe not. It's one of those things you can put
off until your mouth starts hurt. Any you've you've had
like at least one thing right where you've had to
(01:27):
go under, do you recall it, Like? What was it like?
Was that experience like for me? Great? Honestly, honestly, I've
had I've had a number of operations that were not
related to one another, and in each case things went swimmingly.
And you know, you lose time you go under. You
(01:50):
wake up and you're fine, or you feel fine, you're
probably really high. So I remember when I had my
wisdom teeth taken out. I cannot remember which year this was,
but it was definitely in the US, after the country
was formed, and and uh, I thought I was I
thought I was fine, And I didn't understand why you can't.
(02:12):
You're not allowed to know, operate a heavy machinery, drive
a car, flat helicopter, whatever your method of transportation is.
And so I thought it was fine until I walked
out of the dentist office and then stumbled and sat
on the steps and thought I'm gonna be here for
a while to get a ride though you just you
just do You didn't go for that, No, I I
lied about it. But it is a moment of being conscious,
(02:37):
then you're not aware of anything, and then you come
back all of a sudden, Well there's a fade. I
think you know, the feeling of falling asleep, but it's
a precipitous drop off, so it feels like maybe you're
about to doze, and then you wake up usually now.
Interestingly enough, there are some genetic markers that show anesthesia
(02:58):
affects people in markedly, markedly different ways. For example, people
who have the redhead gene, you and I for exampia. Uh,
we we have the potential to require more anesthesia than
the average person. But I don't know, I don't know
what what the correlation is there. Do you have to
(03:21):
be full redhead or do you have to be what
South Park we call a day walker? If you guys
remember that, so I am very I'm very glad to
hear that you guys have not had terrible surgical experiences,
and luckily in this country, at least in the United States,
for those who can afford to pay the tab the
(03:42):
surgery or the surgical environment rather is not as fatal
as at once. What's and it used to be an
absolute abatois, But we want to hear your weirdest, uh,
your weirdest surgery experiences. When we start that way, you
can pause the podcast at any point and call us
the directly. We are one eight three three s T
(04:03):
D W y t K. Leave a message. You get
three minutes. If you can't fit it in, then that
amount of time just to call back. And as always,
let us know if you do not want this to
be on air, If this is just for us a
mission control, that's fine, just be very clear about that.
So we are talking about surgery today. We are talking
(04:23):
about one of the most controversial types of surgery, which
is the replacement or transplant of organs, the organ trade,
the organ trail, I think is the worst joke we
made in a previous episode about this. Here here's the problem.
Until we as a species learn how to reliably grow
(04:45):
new organs from scratch, millions of people across the planet
are dying and are going to die as they wait
for viable replacement organs and donors. At least it is
according to the official story into a show. We're exploring
a dark corner of an already very murky trade, the
(05:05):
semi legal or completely illegal industry, known to some as
the red market. And we we have some previous stuff
on this the red Market. We got the title from this,
this fantastic book that looks at the semi legal and
illegal oregan trade. The red market is not is not
related to legitimate organ transplant or donation processes. The way
(05:30):
the legit stuff works in most countries is the following process.
Somebody opts in to donate an organ, usually upon their death.
If you're in the US and you get a driver's license,
you get that question, do you agree to be an
organ donor? In some states you get a discount if
you agree to be an organ donor? Right, but after,
(05:51):
let's say something tragic happens when dies in a car accident,
right or they have a they have a heart attack. Oh,
we should mention that too many people have the miskans
sception that if you sign up to be an organ
donor on your driver's license, it only applies to auto accidents.
It does not you go down for any reason. Uh,
and you've got viable organs boom boom boom there as
(06:12):
long as you didn't explode or die of you know,
poison or a terrible disease. I don't know why people
would think that that's interesting. Um, yeah, I always assumed
it was. You know, for all intents and purposes, these
organs belong to the people. It's very strange, you know,
with the idea that someone someone would say, well, my
kidneys are still going to be mine because I tripped
and fell or something like that. It's strange. But maybe
(06:35):
it's a comforting thing because our organs are very personal
parts of ourselves and our identities. But this also is
an important point. Today's topic is about a system of
government that does not have such safeguards in place. We
get to check a box on a card that says
we choose to donate our organs. That is not the
case with today's episode. It's certainly more complicated than that. Yeah,
(06:57):
in some cases, just just for a full clid text here.
In some cases there are countries that will require you
to opt out of being an organ donor. With some
European countries recently did that. I have no problem with that. Well,
it's a it's a psychological move because it massively increases
the number of people who become organ donors, not because
(07:18):
of informed consent. It's because they didn't read the entire thing,
which is weird. I can't think of any reason why
you wouldn't want to be an organ donor. For most people,
it's religious. Yeah, for most people it's religious, or you know,
it goes into the method of burial or uh, you
know what's cremation creation, perhaps burial, let's sea or you know,
(07:42):
you can't be embalmed things like that. It's it's along
the same list. The Red Market, however, is in news
much more recently now. You can even you you've probably
seen this popping up in your news feed whatever, your
news feed of choices today while we're recording this. Yes, yes,
it was on the front page of Reddit today. As
(08:04):
we go in, this story takes us to the red
market in the People's Republic of China. So here are
the facts about China's official oregan donation system. Yeah, they
certainly have one of the largest transplant programs in the
entire world, and a lot of that is just a
factor of the number of human beings that exist within China.
(08:27):
But we do have some numbers about estimates that come
officially from the Chinese government, and these go back to
two thousand four, this first one, right in two thousand four,
they estimated that over thirteen thousand transplants were performed, and
then in two thousand six they estimated that as many
as twenty thousand transplants had been performed. And remember those
are official estimates from the government, and though, and that's
(08:50):
way back in two thousand four, two thousand six, and
you can only imagine that as population has grown over time,
those numbers have risen tremendously. Well, you can see, you
can see it almost bubbles across two years, even officially.
And that's that's something else. You would think, with so
many people waiting in line for an organ, that the
waiting time would would be a matter of years, right,
(09:13):
and you're sort of racing the clock of your body's
decay and the availability of an organ donor of some sort.
But here's the thing. The waiting time for an organ
transplant in China is cartoonishly low. It is by far
the lowest amount of waiting time on the planet. As
often organ tourists o r g A and tourist, which
(09:36):
is a thing reported receiving kidney transplants within days of
arriving in the country. Days You can tell people what
organ uh what oregan tourists are just simple as it is,
traveling to another country to obtain an organ that you
can't because you're on a waiting list perhaps in your
own country, or it would cost too much, there was
some preventive reason that you cannot get an organ in
(09:58):
your home country. Right, it's this city. It's it's a
subset of medical tourism because the United States has is
home to quite a few medical tours who are going
out of necessity. You know this, This country has great
specialized health care for those who can afford it, but
an operation that may cost tens of thousands of dollars
(10:19):
here may cost you know, much less just in Canada
or Mexico. So, I mean, this problem is not reported
as much as it should be in the US because
I think it gets wrapped up in uh politicized conversations,
especially during election cycles. And we're sort of always in
(10:39):
an election cycle now. But can you imagine you need
a kidney You can wait what three to five years
maybe more here in the US, or you can fly
to China pay pay more, maybe than you would for
the kidney itself, but you know, within a week or
two your your parts have been replaced, like the six
(11:01):
million dollar man. There was a report produced by these researchers,
David Maddison David Kilgore, which cited the China International Transplantation
Assistance Center as saying, again this is the actual official
source quote, it may only take one week to find
the suitable donor, the maximum time being one month. WHOA again,
(11:25):
let's compare that to other countries. Okay, So to do that,
we have to look at the median waiting times for
an organ transplantation UH in somewhere like Australia, which is,
for example, six months to four years. Canada you're looking
at six years, that says eleven and in the UK
it's three years. China UM swears up and down that
(11:49):
it sticks to these international standards. These medical standards require
organ donations to be done by consent and without any
UM users financial charges. And on the surface, that's seems legit,
I guess right, but there's a lot more at play here.
On the first glance, people are saving lives. It's hard
to argue that that's a bad thing. But let's let's
(12:09):
let's slow our role a little bit real quick, and
let's look at where this extraordinary speed comes from. It
ain't for free, right right, And I love that you're
pointing out the the idea of informed consent and not
having financial charges. Longtime listeners will remember we looked at
the uh just repugnant practice of some some unethical organ
(12:34):
procurers in the Indian subcontinent where they'll pay somebody what
the equivalent of a couple hundred bucks to take their kidney,
and then they'll jack up the price the thousands and thousands.
You can see entire villages of people who all have
the same identical scar on their left or right side.
So if you find someone who is in dire financial
(12:55):
straits and you offer them a little bit of cash,
it's not really informed scent. And as you said, there
is a price to this extraordinary speed. First, as as
you pointed out, Matt, the official numbers from the government
do not match with the estimates from international organizations. A
study in the Journal Clinical Transplantation said that only four
(13:16):
percent of oregan transplant experts believed procurement processes in China
were ethically sound, so they asked do you think the
government is telling you the truth about this? Do you
think they're on the up and up? And four percent
of people said yeah, sure, I don't know. I wonder
if that this is just my It was like it's
(13:38):
like weird skeptical anti skeptical thing where it's like, I
wonder how many of those people were just like why
there's no way for me to tell so I can't
say yes. Well, I mean it goes back to that
old expression about you know products. For example, you can
have something fast, you can have something cheap, you're gonna
have something good. You can have two of them at
the same time, but you definitely can't have all three
of them at the same time. And this Chinese system
(13:59):
see us to purport that you get all three. And
that is when you're being sold of a bill of
goods typically, right. I always wonder where that statement comes from,
always think about that earlier. I haven't looked it up yet,
but when someone sold a bill of goods, what does
that mean? Well, this has come up before and I
feel like we found out the answer, But now I
think I think what it had to do with like
a bill of goods is like a shipping list of
(14:19):
like stuff that would be in the hull of a ship.
And I think sometimes if you're sold a bill of goods,
it implies that you're being sold the promise of something,
but not the thing itself. There we go, well, put, okay,
that makes sense. So there's another factor here. The World
Health Organization or WHO, which is again the coolest initialism
out there, has figures suggesting that around ten percent of
(14:42):
transplants in this country occurred via transplant tourism in at
least in two thousand and five, and China was the
leading destination for patients out of all the other countries
in the world. Second, when health officials in China launched
a now shoal donation system in two thousand and nine,
(15:02):
the government itself reported that two thirds of organ donors
could be traced to one demographic and one demographic alone
prisoners who were executed in the Chinese incarceration system. And
that's the official number. That's the official number. It's a
little bit north of sixty. And we must keep in
(15:23):
mind again international experts have been claiming these numbers are
ginned up in lobald for years. The authorities had previously
acknowledged that Cornea's kidneys and other body parts come from
criminals and that they've been successfully transplanted. But this was
the first official acknowledgement of the extent of this practice.
(15:43):
When they said, oh, well, we said sometimes in the
nineteen seventies, they didn't admit it in the seven It
was happening in the seventies of but it wasn't admitted
to uh, they said, when we said sometimes, we meant
two thirds at the time, which is still not all
the time. So it's sometimes. But if when you're saying
two thirds of even the official numbers that are low balled,
you're talking thousands of people. And here's why they created
(16:05):
the system. They were hoping that this new plan would
tackle the thriving black market in body parts and encourage
voluntary donation, which you know, as we mentioned it, it
remains far below demand in the country, partially due to
social taboos and mores and partially due to some religious reasons. Interesting,
(16:26):
so it is largely designed for this medical tourism. It's
this system is officially supposed to encourage more people to
be donors, but the system, the way it functions, yes,
does appear it is very it's a very long reach.
(16:46):
It's a walk around a long block to say that
this is not purposely designed for Oregon tourism. We're gonna
get deeper into the deeds behind that. Yeah, unfortunately, we
will as strap in, folks, hold your kidneys, your heart,
your corny, as your liver close, because we're going in
the state. Newspaper China Daily said about one million people
(17:07):
needed transplants each year, but only one received them, and
at the time, the Vice Minister for Health in China,
Huang Jifu said, transplants, this is a quote. Transplants should
not be a privilege for the rich. And uh, he
said that there were these you know, whenever a condemned
to prisoner was going to be donating their organ there
(17:29):
was written consent that was required to be taken from
them or or acquired by from them. And he added
that they were definitely not a proper source for organ transplants.
So that's interesting. Uh, the the vice Minister for Health
in China saying that that the prisoners condemned to death
(17:50):
prisoners were not a proper source for organ transplants. He
also ended up telling a newspaper outlet or you know,
a media outlet China Daily that somehow spitals actually ignored
the rules because of the high profits that they could
acquire by doing things a different way, right, and the
newspaper said that there were experts. Experts they're the estimated
that more than sixty percent of donors were actually criminals
(18:14):
who had received the death penalty. So again the two
thirds number of pops up in a couple of different sources.
What's interesting is that years earlier, the government ruled the
organs from executed prisoners would only be given to family members,
and that living donors could only give body parts to
relatives or to those with whom they shared A quote
(18:34):
emotional connection that sounds like, well, think about like you
have a you have a relative or something that well
this is let me let me compare it this way.
You have an in law maybe and you, unlike all
the stereotypical jokes, you love your father in law, your
mother in law, and you're a donor match. So you
say I want to give them my kidney, and they
(18:54):
say you're not They're not kind, they're not really a
biological family members. You can you can claim that you
can you get to define the emotional connection yeah, yeah,
I would be able to. I am going to give
ban my kidney because I love him. Thank you, thank you,
and uh that's that's true. And all you have a
you have a good heart. I don't know where you
got if you can't have it, though, I don't want
to know. I'm talking about the other one. But how
(19:17):
are those kidneys doing? Are they okay? They're a little
I comed them up a little bit, road harder put
away a way. Uh yeah, it's it's true. Emotional connection
gives you some leeway, you know, some ownership over where
you want your body parts to go. In theory, the
percentage of transplants from living donors has risen from fifteen
(19:38):
percent two thousand and six to in two thousand and nine,
and it seems to continue ticking up, which is a problem.
According to a professor Chen Jong Hwa in the Institute
of Organ Transplantation at tongues You a hospital, only one
hundred and thirty people on the main land of China,
(20:00):
which has a population of one point three billion again
had signed up to donate their organs after they died.
Only one hundred and thirty out of more than a billion.
That's how few people that's that's how passionate people are
about keeping their organs after death. And to be fair, though,
that was in two thousand three, um, fairly early on
(20:22):
in that process, or at least earlier, right, right, So
the numbers today are kind of tricky. You can find
sources that will that's the thing. It's tough to find
official sources that will say numbers that transparently. So we
have to rely upon in country experts or people with experience,
which means that we're also we're also possibly reading their agenda,
(20:47):
which goes, aren't we always though? I don't know? Yeah, yeah,
maybe maybe, maybe you're right. So these stories of foreigners
traveling to China just for organ transplants for were rife.
They were rumors for a long time, but when China
Daily was reporting on this, they added a little bit
(21:07):
more fuel to the fire and they said that there
was an entire industry of middlemen who specialized in faking
documents to evade the law. And faking a document could
be everything from your official purpose to China if you
want to hide that fact, to a fake consent form
when they say, okay, well you know this person just
(21:30):
signed this document and then they said it's fine. They
said you're a loved one, They said, you have an
emotional connection. At the time, citizens could pay up to
two thousand yuan for a kidney. That was a little
under twenty thousand pounds, so excessive excess of for a
(21:51):
kidney in the US at those prices, right, the US dollars.
And then we have a new development you mentioned earlier.
Matt Hauling Jaffou, the former minister. In February he said
he was retired. He said that from January one, organ
(22:12):
donation from voluntary civilian organ donors has become the only
legitimate source of transplantation. And people interpreted this as a
ban on the use of organs from executed prisoners. So
no more, yeah, he said the he said, it's the
only legitimate source. Right, It's like the pursuit of happiness. Yeah,
(22:38):
So the piece isn't he the guy that also said
that it shouldn't be a privilege just for the rich guy.
So here's the thing. I mean, you can say stuff
like that all day long, and you can try to
put safeguards in place, but when it comes to something
so scarce, anything that that you know, thrives on scarcity,
it's always going to become a market like that that
favors the rich, because that's just how it is. That's
(23:01):
how people work, that's how money works, and these systems work.
So it's one thing for him to say that, But
how can you really, you know, put an end to
that human need of like, well, I have more money,
therefore I deserve to get better treatment. I deserve to
get like first in line or whatever to live exactly. Yeah,
I agree, economy is the dominant religious paradigm of this age.
(23:25):
And these are the effects that happen when you know
you have zealous people participating in a religion. If you
think the economy is not a religion, I would love
to hear your argument. Why tell me why they differ?
There you go, that's I don't know. You know, I'm
not going to say it's a hill I'll die on.
But we've asked this question before and there there aren't
that many differences. And this is not a ding on religion.
(23:48):
It's not ding on economy, but the belief that things
should be determined by these sorts of economic systems. But
we're all playing this guy in a nice game when
we say that they're different It's sort of like the
old thing about how ridiculous it will look to future
historians when we think about driving on the inter state.
(24:08):
You know, we were in these death machines that went
in excess of eighty miles an hour. How did you
not hit each other? How did you not kill each other?
We did all the time, But there were lines, We
had these, this honor system of painted lines. Oh did
the lines stop? You know? No, you just you kind
of agreed that these other strangers piloting their own death
machines would also adhere to the honor system of the line.
(24:31):
When you put it like that, and be really scared
to drive because nobody follows the honor system. I don't
know if you guys have been driving around in Atlanta,
Holy Lord, and you know that same idea applies to this.
Nobody followed this on our system either didn't right, the
money gets too good, the pieces come together. So with
just this high level look, we can already see some
(24:53):
issues the official government statements are not jibing with statements
from NGOs and other international institutions. We can also see,
as you pointed out, all the huge economic incentive for
cheating the system, and then There's another question where exactly
are all these organs coming from? Most importantly, what if
(25:15):
the government of China never stopped getting organs from executive prisoners.
Even more disturbingly, what if the government of China is
no longer waiting for these prisoners to die? Oh guess what,
it's time for a sponsor break. After that, monsters, here's
(25:44):
where it gets crazy. That's right, that's right, conspiracy realist,
you did not misshear us. We are talking about on
demand executions. Rumors about executions for the express purposes of
harvesting organs have dogged the Chinese government for decades. Decades
and decades back to I think the earliest reports are
(26:05):
in the nineteen seventies, but they existed for a long
time on the fringe of mainstream debate. This recently changed.
An independent tribunal seated in London was assembled to investigate
the truth, if any, about this countrywide conspiracy to execute
people and harvest their organs. Is called the Independent Tribunal
(26:25):
Enforced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscious in China, and
it reached some ugly, ugly conclusions. We do have to
say this is technically an in GEO and non governmental organization.
That's one of the main objections China has with it.
So there was an interim judgment that was released in
December of that stated that, beyond a doubt, forced oregan
(26:48):
harvesting from prisoners has taken place quote on a substantial
scale by state support or approved organizations and individuals. And
then further um noted that the findings were indicative of
essentially genocide. Um though it was not clear enough to
make a positive ruling. Right, And so some people may
(27:08):
say genocide, guys, isn't that a bit alarmist? Let's let's
remember what genocide is. Genocide is the eradication of a
large group of people, especially from a particular ethnic group
or a nation, or in some cases religion of religion. Right,
(27:28):
So this is don't have any of that here, though,
do we even? I mean, we don't don't see any
of those Oh wait, we do, don't we? Which one
that one of those groups is involved? Here? Oh? Yes, yes,
that's absolutely right. Yeah, I thought you here is in
the US. No. No, I just meant, like, you know,
I mean, it sounds to me like they're saying genocide.
That's a real buzzy term. We need a little bit more,
you know, proof that this is happening, like in order
(27:50):
we need like a target of said genocide. Right, the
following going, Yeah, So the following going, which you have
probably heard about before on our show or in any
international news is it translates the title translates to dharma
wheel practice or law wheel practice. It's a Chinese spiritual
(28:10):
movement that combines chigong and meditation with this moral philosophy.
So it's kind of like a religion. It's safe to
say most people when they hear about it, they would
interpret it as a religion because the ultimate goal is
the idea of enlightenment on a spiritual level. It was
started in so it's very it's very young. Initially the
(28:34):
Chinese officials and the Communist Party thought that, you know,
they supported it, right, but because of its size, because
of its independence from the state and it's emphasis on
spiritual teaching, it was seen as something like it's a
good way, a possible security risk, or a secessionist movement maybe,
(28:58):
and it was officially in at several times throughout history.
Now it's been labeled as a cult, an evil cult,
a dangerous group, like all these things by by the
Chinese government. Well, have you guys ever seen the chin
Yunu posters and billboards ads that are like everywhere this
aerial acrobat China organization. Yeah, well it's like a traveling
(29:19):
show or whatever. Right, Uh, they practice Fallonong. I mean,
it's become a joke like that show is so prevalent
any city you're in, you're gonna see them on bill
bulletin boards and you know, busses and everything. It's like
a very popular show. But yes, they are practitioners of Fallonong.
Interesting and in two thousand and six, official allegations emerged
that a large number of Follongong practitioners have been killed
(29:41):
to supply the oregan transplant industry in China. Uh and
these came from those uh, those earlier writers we had mentioned,
David Kilgore, former Canadian Secretary of State, and David Mantas,
who's a human rights lawyer. The problem, of course, spoiler alert.
China denies all of this, and recently this tribunal after
(30:04):
after their uh their statement in December in twenty nineteen,
the tribunal concluded that the killing of detainees in China
for organ transplants hasn't stopped, it is continuing, and though
Following Gong detainees might not be the only source of
these illegal organ harvesting operations, they are one of the
(30:27):
primary sources. And in a unanimous determination just this year,
they said that the evidence clearly indicated this forced organ
harvesting again, killing people, not because of what they did
to land in jail, but killing people because there's a
new order in for a hot off the cadaver kidney right,
(30:49):
And they said this had taken place for at least
two decades. They said there were certain the Following Gong
group was a source, probably the principal source of these
organs of According to a guy named Sir Jeffrey Nice,
who chaired the tribunal, he's a QC. The conclusion shows
that very many people have died in describably hideous deaths
(31:09):
for new reason, that more may suffer in similar ways,
and that all of us live on a planet where
extreme wickedness may be found in the power of those
for the time being running a country with one of
the oldest civilizations known to modern man. Continues to say
there is no evidence of the practice having been stopped,
and the tribunal is satisfied that it is continuing. No, really,
(31:30):
they're satisfied that it's continuing. No, it's British, British language,
we understand. But yeah, so they said, they said, this
is not a theory, right, this is not a rumor.
There's not a couple of isolated cases from the nineteen nineties.
This is happening. And it's like, we we can't we
(31:53):
can say it's indicative of genocide, even if we can't
conclusively say it's genocide, because that's sort of a United
Nations determine nation a lot of times. But they said,
you're killing people. Yeah, and there there are more details
to this situation, and it gets darker, and we're going
to cover that right after another word from our sponsor.
(32:18):
What's the creepy line from Willy Wonka, the gene Wilder
version where it gets really dark? Oh, no, that's what's
a where this is going. Yes, this is this is
that part. This is where we go deeper into the
(32:40):
tunnel here. Because although China again dismisses these claims as
politically motivated and untrue, even calling them propaganda, essentially, we
know that there there are numerous examples of what appears
to be first hand testimony from both following Gong members
and Weaker in eights in the in the concentration camps
(33:02):
in western China were being a religious group and also
like a race, right. Uh. Yeah, They're a ethnic minority
in China, and the majority, the ethnic majority in China
would be the Han. That we are are Muslim and
practicing Muslims. They've been in these so called education or
(33:23):
re education camps. The people are pro we grow activists
will say that the Han are forcibly assimilating them or
trying to wipe out their culture by putting them in
these camps and making them reject their religious their long
held religious practices. And if you want to learn more
about that, we have an entire episode on modern day
concentration camps. I believe that's called something similar to that.
(33:44):
You can learn about that right now. And I actually
I stumbled upon an article on news dot com dot
au and Australian site that went into some of the
conditions and some of these camps, and I mentioned to
Ben and Matt that I had watched a couple of
these videos, and Ben was surprised is that some of
the folks that gave their accounts were actually left alive,
because that is pretty uncommon, right relatively, so yeah, and
(34:08):
you know, and I'm not saying that this is completely
without you know, questionability, but there are some perspectives of
some folks that describe having blood forcibly drawn from their
arms and ear lobes, and the idea is that it
was to check the viability of their organs they were beaten.
But then that one gentleman who seems like he was
(34:28):
kind of railroaded because he described them kind of like
claiming to have found Falling Gong materials on his computer. Um,
but he did not purport to have been a member.
And so it almost feels like this is like a
thing they can use on people, you know, to like say, oh,
your enemy of the state because we found these materials
or whatever. It would always be suspicious if someone is
(34:50):
caught because of something quote unquote found on their computer.
Very so easy, so easy to plan and um stories
like that where then a actually after you know, beatings
where one gentleman overheard somebody guard saying be careful not
to damage his organs, you know, but like really really
brutal beatings, UM, and doctors not speaking to the individuals,
(35:14):
they would draw blood from them without saying, you know,
with repeated questions as to what they're doing, why they're
doing it, they wouldn't answer. Um. And yeah, it's like
basically these forced labor camps where people are pulled out
of line and kind of like taken to these these
medical facilities. And one person in particular that you know,
had a very similar or you know, the same experience
(35:34):
was a woman named Jennifer Zing who was a felon
gooing activist. She was imprisoned for only about a year
in a labor camp for women only. Uh and and
she has this quote that she should that she gave
to the Guardian. I'm just gonna read this. It says,
on the day we were transferred to the labor camp,
we were taken to a medical facility where we underwent
physical checkups. We were interrogated about what diseases we had,
(35:57):
and I told them I had hepatitis. The second time,
after about a month in the camp, everyone was handcuffed
and put into a van and taken to a huge
hospital that was a far more thorough physical checkup. We
were given X rays. On the third occasion in the camp,
they were drawing blood from us. We were all told
to line up in the corridor and the tests were given.
(36:19):
So it really does paint a picture of UM when
you were inside this labor camp as a you know,
a prisoner. Essentially, your health is very important to the
people who are keeping you there, and that is you know,
over all the episodes that we've done on you know,
we just did one on UH on prison healthcare. And
(36:41):
while this isn't the same thing, we're in a different country,
we're into different circumstances, but generally check that that number
of checkups and monitoring of health in a prison system,
I would say, is not UM standards, not at all,
and I mean not unless something really dire happens and
then you're admitted, and you know that's usually they don't
(37:03):
just say, hey, how are you doing? Can we check
up on you and make sure that you're feeling okay.
So here's the tricky part. Two. According to this tribunal's estimates,
as many as ninety thousand transplant operations are being conducted
a year out of this country, and that is a
much much higher figure than that given by official government
(37:24):
sources in China. But all of this evidence technically, all
of these eyewitness accounts, all of the all of the
testimony of former surgeons or soldiers, it's still legally is circumstantial.
And no one has there's a good article about this
a new scientists. No one has been able to directly
(37:44):
observe or prove that these transplant organs are still being
sourced from prisoners. Even if we have soldiers claiming that
they've seen live organ harvesting, there's no tape of this,
you know what I mean, there's knowing con revertible video proof.
And now the Chinese Embassy has commented on these claims
(38:08):
in a fairly categorical manner. As quoted in the Guardian,
the embassy said the Chinese government will always follow the
World Health Organization's guiding principles on human organ transplant and
its strengthened its management on organ transplant in recent years.
On March two thousand seven, the Chinese State Council enacted
the Regulation on Human Organ Transplant, providing that human organ
(38:30):
donation must be done voluntarily and gratis free of charge.
We hope that the British people will not be misled
by rumors because there's this, uh, there's this movement now
in the United Kingdom to ban people from traveling to
China for the purposes of medical tourism. That's how that's
how big the concern has become. Well, then, let's so
(38:52):
we already know that this is a big deal, right,
And we don't really have, as you said, been, any
kind of incontrovertible video evidence of this just occurring at
a labor camp over and over even one time. If
we did, then we could come right out and say that.
But we do have testimony of at least one person
that we found, uh who is said to have taken
(39:14):
part in taking organs out of a person who was
still alive, who had just been shot by authorities of
some sort. And he was a he was a medical professional. Right,
that's correct. So let's let's go to July. Go let's
go to Ireland where the Senate was meeting. They were
(39:34):
meeting with the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade
in Defense, and they were hearing evidence from experts about
specifically the organ harvesting or the alleged organ harvesting that
was going on in China. And there's a man named
Dr enver Toti. I believe that's correct. Um, he was
giving testimony about how he was quote led to perform
(39:54):
organ harvesting on a civilian in China, and this was
early on in his medical career. It was he said
that there were two chief surgeons who told him to
assemble a team. This is he's he's just being told
this assemble a team for the largest possible surgery the
following morning. So you know, again it's early in his career. Uh,
(40:17):
he's being told this by people who work for the government,
essentially in the medical system. Um, he ends up getting,
you know, gathering a team. They're brought outside of a
hospital and they're told to wait for the gun shots.
This is what he's giving testimony. You can watch a
video of him giving this testimony. Um, it's uh, it's
pretty crazy to to listen to it because this is
(40:41):
what he says. Then, after gunshots were her we rushed in.
An armed officer directed us to the far right corner
where I can see a civilian clothed man lying on
the ground with a single bullet wound to his right chest.
My chief surgeons ordered and guided me to extract the
liver and the two kidneys. The man was alive. He
tried to his this to my scalpel cut, but was
(41:01):
too weak to avoid my action. There was bleeding. He
was still alive and this yeah, and you know in
this article where you can find this. And during this
uh this uh this committee hearing, as as Dr Tody
is giving this, he's saying, every time I tell this story,
it feels like a confession. And then he goes on
(41:21):
to talk about how he felt like he was just
in that moment and in his career, he felt like
he was carrying out his duty for his country and
he was going to quote eliminate the enemy of the state. Right.
His story is fascinating. So Dr Emvert Tody is fifty
seven now he's an uber driver working in the UK,
(41:42):
but it was it was formerly a surgeon and he
was working in Romchi in northwest China when his boss
has asked him, quote, do you want to do something wild?
He was a young doctor at the time. He said yes,
and they drove him to the Western Mountain execute action grounds.
He saw around fifteen bodies on the mountain side, all
(42:02):
of which have been shot in the head. So this
may be a different I think, because the one we
just described, the guy was shot in the once in
the right side of his chest, right avoiding the heart.
Noticed that, uh. And when he when he was there,
he was ordered to cut deep and work fast on
a victim that he claimed had not been and esther
(42:23):
sized and who had been shot in the chest. So
it's the same it's the same guy. Uh. And this
guy like he still took organs out of the people
who have been shot in the head. But the the
guy who was shot in the chest, he knew, he
knew it was still alive because he was struggling and
there was still blood coming out of the cut, which
meant the heart was still pumping. And he was ordered
(42:47):
to remove the liver, both kidneys, so the body back
up and quote remember that today nothing happened. So he
has he still has PTSD from this and dedicates his
life to campaigning for awareness of the practice. That's that's
his that's his statement, and that's where we are today
with this. Make no mistake, China is home to a
(43:10):
massive organ trade. That that's not in question. The question
here is whether or not this trade is legal. What
is the provenance of these organs? Was the destination? What
is the economic uh fuel for this engine? Regardless of
which side you ask, you're going to find a conspiracy theory.
On one side, you'll find the Chinese government and officials
(43:31):
alleging and conspiracy on the part of other nations attempting
to discredit it, to attack it and vilify it on
the international stage. And they'll point out this is true.
They'll point out that these are in g o s
often right on the other side well, and sometimes have
meddled before absolutely as outside organizations. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, that's
(43:54):
unfortunately a tale as old as modern time. On the
other side, international investigations and several other countries, primarily countries
in the West, allege the government of China itself is
involved in a conspiracy to supply cheap organs by executing
marginalized members of society and maybe even sometimes arresting them
(44:14):
when oregan demand gets high enough and they need more bodies,
bodies in the cells or on the shooting grounds. To
be fair, though, no government is actually monolithic and no
government is uniform, so it's entirely possible that corrupt factions
in the government are supporting this illegal practice while other
factions fight against it, you know what I mean. Someone
(44:36):
there might be a caball of people in northwestern China
who are making money on the side in an in
an underground operation, like the people in charge of a prison,
right are making money by just letting the bodies disappear
for a second after execution on their way to wherever
their final resting place will be. And then the doctors
(44:58):
might be making money on the side, and and the
regional officials or the local government in the area might
be making money by turning a blind eye. Uh. This
this is how a lot of these things work. This
is this would be categorized as true crime. We cannot
escape the fact that there is a profound amount of
money involved on on either side, the legal trade and
(45:21):
the illegal trade. And so now we have to ask
which side do you believe and why Propaganda is a
huge business too. It's you would you might be surprised,
but it's it's similar to the Oregon trade in that
there's a there are lives on the line, just not
as directly, and it's just called public relations now. It's
just called public relations now. So it is completely possible
(45:45):
for some stories to be circulated, especially when there's a
language barrier or state control of media, and for those
stories to appear realistic but then later turn out to
be propaganda, like that Nurse Narayah story infamous, which is
pretty much made up about the children being pulled out
at incubators, or like the stories that chose on Elbow
(46:09):
will run sometimes that are anti d p r K.
And let me very clear, I am not defending that country.
I'm just saying that propaganda exist. So do you think
this is propaganda? Do you think this is a system
of murder to sell organs or is this something in between?
Is it a few bad actors or is it something
(46:31):
that is just growing now and has been growing, something
that will continue across the planet as resources continue to
get scarce and humans continue to be less and less valued.
I will tell you one thing I did. I can't
say that I fully believe that this is happening, um,
just because, like you said, been early early on in
(46:53):
this the numbers are so opaque, We know so very little.
If that does lead my conspiratorial brain or side of
me to say, well, they're probably hiding something, but I
have a hard time fully believing it. But what I
what I can say is that it terrifies me that
a lot of human beings, these days, are walking around
(47:14):
giving all of their health information to some third party
app or something on their phone, or we're all you know,
we're all tracking our biometrics, or many of us are,
even if we don't even realize it. In the same
way that these prisoners are being checked up on all
the time to make sure their their blood is good,
to make sure their organs are functioning correctly. In a
(47:35):
similar way, we're kind of doing the same thing, but
we're collecting it for some corporation out there that's going
to be to have all of our information at some
point when when the people with the money need our organs.
You know what I'm saying, guys, Jeez, Matt, that's why,
that's why you have the party gather you why you
(47:56):
may just drink as much as possible to make sure
that livers not ready to burn the village to save
the village, you know what I mean? Wow, that I'm sorry.
I did not mean for that to be that dark. Okay,
that is that is a horrific quote that is attributed
to the US military's legal actions during the Vietnam War.
There you go, h and we want to hear. We
(48:18):
want to hear your opinion upon this because it touches
on many many things. You can tell us about your
strange experiences with surgery in your neck of the Global Woods,
tell us about your experience with Oregon transplants. And also,
you know, maybe there's a little bit too much of
a door to open here, but what what do you
think about the current state of US healthcare, which we
(48:42):
briefly mentioned here? Do you do feel the free market
is best? Do you do you think that? Uh? Do
you think that people should die of curable conditions and
diseases due to you know, financial concerns? I hope not. Well,
I mean I want to I want to hear what
people think. That's good. Yeah, you're right, you can. You
(49:03):
can tell us about all this and more. Most importantly,
you are our favorite part of this show, specifically you're listening,
so we would always love to hear topics that you
think would fascinate your fellow listeners. And we have a
ton of ways that you can contact us. One of
the best ones is to head over to Facebook and
join our special group, our private group called Here's where
(49:26):
it gets crazy. You have to say who are the
hosts are of the show. But if you get just
one I think even Okay, well, if you get one right,
that's perfect. If you mentioned Mission Control, Mr poll d
over there, that's good. I just saw one where somebody
called Ben ben Brolin, which I really like. Thanks guys. Well,
and you know there's Sunny D and Polly D right,
(49:47):
and I'm Polly Walnuts that's right, or mentioned Badgers. We've
we had a couple of really just make us laugh,
you know, we're in it's it's a crazy year and
things are just gonna get stranger before they level out.
And you can also find us on Twitter where we're
conspiracy stuff. On Facebook regular were conspiracy stuff, and on
(50:10):
Instagram were conspiracy stuff show. And you guys have some handles, Yeah,
you can. You can see very until I get disappeared
at some point. You can find various global misadventures at
Ben Boling My My misadventures mainly stay relegated to the
continental United States, but you can find those at how
(50:32):
Now Noel Brown and mine. I have one that I
just haven't put anything on yet. It's just sitting there
and I think I'm only I think I'm only friends.
What do you call it when Instagram followers, I'm only
following my wife right now, which I probably shouldn't if
it's gonna be official account. I don't know how these
things work anyway. Uh, let's move on. You're adorable. I
(50:52):
do want to give one shout out though, to some
folks on our Facebook page. Here's where he gets crazy,
who are telling us that are new email address was
getting kicked back to them. We used to be conspiracy
at how stuff works dot com, but we changed that.
We changed that to a different address, which will will
give at the end of the show, and we're we're
(51:14):
checking on it to make sure it works. So if
you if you feel like you've emailed us and it's
not getting to us, then send us. Contact us one
of those other ways. Uh, there's another way we mentioned
at the top of the show. You can you can
call us. We're one eight three three st d w
y t K. Give us a call, leave us a
message again, all the other rules apply. Make us laugh
(51:35):
is the best. But tell us what you want us
to talk about. Tell us what you're doing dreams. Yeah,
how do you listen to the show with just some
silly thing that we can talk about? Your blood type,
your social Security number, a list of your fears. Also
if you if you don't like any of that, if
that's not quite bad in your badgers. We do have
an email address. Uh, go ahead and drop us a line.
(51:57):
We are conspiracy at i heeart radio dot com. Yeah.
(52:18):
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