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Comment by basicplus2 | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps legislation needs to be passed so people found having gone to China for organ transpants would be charged with murder

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It would be more appropriate to charge China with murder (crimes against humanity in this case). Besides, it's far more effective to attack people providing an illegal service than those patronizing it.

Supposedly they would need the organ transplant to stay alive. Saying that they should have the common decency to just die already without bothering us or China and labeling them "murderers" (instead of China) strikes me as incredibly tone deaf and unethical.

If I'd pay a hit-man to kill a donor I wouldn't get away with it, despite the urgency. If I knowingly visit a country who kills people for donation I am an accomplice. Where I come from this has the same term as the deed itself.

Outside being attacked you can't kill people for self-preservation.

How could you discover and prove that without cooperation from Chinese law enforcement?

Home-country medical records indicating the need for a transplant, travel records, financial records, signs of surgery, and finally, biopsy of organ in question.

If if caches on ..

- It would just shift the transplant location to Russia, Myanmar, Thailand or Vietnam.

- People would transfer money into bitcoin and pay Chinese organ harvesters with Bitcoin.

- Hospitals will start offering plastic surgery to remove signs of surgery.

- People will shift or retire to places which won't prosecute them for murder.

Fundamentally people will do anything to stay alive.

Requires a whole lot more criminal energy and risk. Laws don't work by making it impossible to commit crime, they make it hard (by regulating what you can do) and risky (by setting up punishment if you get caught).

Adding hurdles won't get rid of the phenomenon completely, but it will certainly decrease it.

Or you could tariff and punish china for doing it.

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