It is possible to charge the buyer for abetment of the offence of organ selling; however a successful charge I think will require proof that the buyer had knowledge of the scheme; that the sellers were selling their organs illegally. Of course the prosecutors may exercise their discretion not to charge the buyers in view of their failing health.

RH:
1. I have, probably alone, pointed out that there is an EVEN GREATER INJUSTICE AND UNFAIRNESS REGARDING ORGANS.

2. In my blog, on 30 October 2006, I wrote an incomplete sketch, titled : “WHY WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO REFUSE OUR ORGANS TO PAP, MINISTERS” :–

3. I pointed out that while all of us commoners have to wait some 9 years for an organ, often dying first and HAVING OUR ORGANS HARVESTED INSTEAD, LIE KY, his family and clan, probably totalling hundreds, plus his Cronies Ministers and THEIR families and clans, totalling thousands, dont have to wait. If KHAW Boon Wan wife needs an organ, or LIE KY daughter, you think they wait 9 years? They have never publicly stated that they would wait and queue like us commoners.

[Deleted by moderator]

5. I also cited the case of LIE KY commandeering a whopping huge SIA jumbo to be rigged out as a medical luxury flying ambulance replete with the best consultants and equipment, etc, to fly his stroked wife back from London when a commercial small flying ambulance jet would be standard practice and far cheaper. Also, SIA, a public company, had no business doing such nepotic favours without even telling its shareholders.

6. Thus, being partial to the rich and powerful is standard practice in Singapore. Justice is corrupt, like every other institution and system in PAPadise. Everything is subverted to the longevity and power plays of the LIEgime and its supporters.

7. Today, I read an excellent Comment that sums up the True Situation in Singapore, appropriately, a nightmare that is real.

[Deleted by moderator]

[...] Organ Trading – TOC: A justice system to protect the strong or the weak? [...]

[...] http://theonlinecitizen.com/2008/07/a-justice-system-to-protect-the-strong-or-the-weak/ Bo Honey, Bo Money, Local, Vote PAP somemore [...]

I pity both men, and I’m glad they were meted with a sentence that commensurate with their plight and why they had to risk their lives to sell kidney in the first place. Who’s to blame? The Indonesia Govt in the first place for more interested in politicking than looking after their people, letting them suffer in poverty, and resulting in their citizens having to sell their body parts for livelihood.

On justice, I say let justice takes its course. As much as I am critical about the Government’s policy, I still very much believe in the integrity of our justice system. Writing an article to put pressure on the judiciary to do this and that seems unwise and not right to me. Worst, I dread the day when sentences are meted purely based on public pressure.

RH:
1. In my comment 2 above, TOC deleted my para 4 — for good reason, I must add. To most reasonable people, even suggesting LIE KY is doing Dracula bloodsucking is preposterous. So, for my credibility, I have to give my reasons, which I hope TOC will let.

2. When my father-in-law was dying of liver cancer, he would steadily become unresponsive, almost comatose, until hardly able to even go through a day as a normal human. But after a blood transfusion, he would immediately “perk up”, alive to such an extent he seemed normal. Then, he would gradually deteriorate, until the next transfusion. Here’re google results using search “blood transfusions to perk up elderly” :–

http://www.google.com.sg/search?q=blood+transfusions+to+perk+up+elderly&btnG=Search&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial&hs=Ady&sa=2

3. BUT there are big problems with transfusions, especially in the West. Tainted blood, with HIV and other diseases. So, in PAPadise, Blood is very carefully managed, mostly for LIEs. HIV donors get long jails, even if unknowing. The whole donor process is very carefully screened to accept only the healthiest donors, unlike the West. Thus, having LIE KY brother head the Blood Bank solves many problems. Screen, select the best bloods, give to LIEs secretly, etc. I now repost my para 4 to let readers decide if reasonable. [My para 7 was merely truncated and a link given to the quote I made, which is Comment 27].

“4. I had also suspected that 1 reason for LIE KY longevity and good health is that he gets constant blood infusions, like Dracula, with carefully chosen best, untainted [non HIV, etc] blood from his brother-controlled public Blood Bank. I was suspicious that his brother, who could have chosen any medical top job in Singapore, for obvious nepotic reasons, chose the Blood Bank, a small outfit in unprestigious premises. Probably to facilitate such Dracula bloodsucking and to ensure secrecy.”

“…that our criminal justice system favours the rich and powerful over the poor”

This surely shouldn’t come to anyone as a surprise, should it? Otherwise cases like the NKF debacle wouldn’t have dragged on till rcently to see the light.

@Terence

I don’t think that it is quite fair to blame the plight of the 2 men on the Indonesian government. Theirs is a case of poor people in a poor country – even a good government will require a big dose of luck to eradicate poverty there. (As opposed to poor people in rich Singapore, but I digress)

What is being highlighted in this article is how this case can give rise to the perception that the rich is being sheltered while the poorer parties are the only ones being punished. Justice is the impartial application of penalties to all guilty parties regardless of wealth and status – has justice really taken its course in this case?

Looking at the two sides, on one end we have poor and probably uneducated rural folk, and on the other hand middle/higher income urban folk. If we really wanted to stamp out organ trade, it seems to me that it will be more effective to hit out at the demand than to punish the supply side alone.

If the rich is not deterred, it will be a simple matter for them to find other poor folk to try beating the law again and again. How would justice be served then?

Gerald,
How did you come to the ‘question: Some lives are more valuable than others’, from what the Judge said?

I do not know if $30k is’ life changing’ for someone living in rural Indonesia, but if it is, I would say it is heartbreaking to see people valuing their own perception of morality over another person’s chance to break their cycle of poverty.

Why not ask yourself, what have you done for that person? You’d rather that the person continue to struggle in his state of poverty just to satisfy your own sense of righteousness?

And for everyone here, I hope that you will read about Iran’s model on organ trading which has all but eliminate the waiting list for a kidney transplant, BEFORE you dismiss organ trading as unethical. The only people in Iran with no kidney transplant are those who has no access to medical aid in the first place, which has nothing to do with the supply of kidneys.
In a regulated environmental, it is as ethically decent as it gets, and everyone’s healthy.
Link here: http://cjasn.asnjournals.org/cgi/content/full/1/6/1136

It’s not prefect, but I think it’s hell better than waiting for altruistic donors to appear.

Indeed, my dad and I were wondering why there have no news yet about the buyers being prosecuted.

I mean, isn’t the reason why organ sale is illegal in Singapore being that in such sales, it is the poor which get exploited?

Most ironic, I think…

Trades in any non-regenerative human organs should not be condoneable much less encourage.

Especially, in Singapore which has legislated a HOTA , a compulsory organs extractions form accidental deaths. As it is, the deceased family are not compensated(paid) for organs removed for transplants and maybe other purposes?

If organs sales are legalized, how will it affects HOTA?

Other than HOTA, how a non-regenearative organ extraction affects the life of the donor/seller and his/her family has never been fully explained and brought to the attentions of the masses(nationally/universally). Maybe no comprehensive medical research has bee conducted yet? Removing a non-regenerative organ should not be taken lightly for it upsets the natural/normal physical make-up of a (human) being.

Having said the above, I am not against organ(s) donations from love and emotionally close kins, kiths and bosom friends on ultruistic ground.

patriot.

RH: Dear 9,
1. You have good points, most of which I have read before. In my blog article in 2 above, para 2, I was unsure, too, about organ sale being legitimised.

2. Firstly, laws are made by politicians, mostly for self-serving and self-aggrandisement reasons. Politicians are certainly not the most ethical or wisest people in any society, especially SG. So they copy elsewhere, mostly West, not only the actual laws but even the debates and the principles, as I have noticed and pointed out before. Because they simply are too stupid to reason from first principles. Our organ laws are no exception.

2. Second, there will always be desperately poor people everywhere, sadly. This problem cannot be solved as long as the present system and concept of sovereign govts continue. Since a sovereign govt has total power and control over its own, another may not interfere. This means that no cross-border help can happen due to this conceptual block. The UN is useless, though important and a potential for great work for mankind if only the US will let it.

3. With so many millions of people desperate for a meal and for their children to eat another day, abuses are easy to do and justify. Our LIEgime imports >40% of SG total labour force in cheap foreign labourers and >170,000 of the nearly 1 million foreign labourers are maids. Your arguments work here too, to them. That the ~S$350 [maid] or ~S$1,000 [labourer] we give them is better than anything they can earn back home. So we can exploit them, in the process, doing great wrongs to our unemployed who want their jobs but a better salary for it. Since we cannot squeeze 90 to a flat like they can. Why not? demands LIE KY.

4. Now, I am still unsure about all this. I have not thought much about all this, just contributing some offhand thoughts. If the intention is to protect the poor, ignorant and desperate from being exploited, are laws the way to do it? If so, what laws? Remember laws seldom solve problems. Laws are crude instruments, almost always criminalising and punishing, seldom rewarding. Laws reflect the politicians who wrote them. They are instruments of power and privilege. And mostly middle-class values.

5. Suppose we agree with you that organs can be sold and bought. That would probably solve the practical problem of supply and demand, AND IN THE PROCESS PROBABLY REDUCE THE CURRENTLY FRANTIC PACE OF ARTIFICIAL ORGAN RESEARCH. Solving 1 problem often prevents another, better solution from being even attempted. If there is no solution, and enough people, especially politicians like LIE KY and family, clan, etc, + Cronies [repeat] die due to no organ, research would probably accelerate until a breakthrough ensures organs for all, either from cadavers, made from plastic, or grown in a petri dish. So, we may be talking about TIME, not a stark choice between life and death for all who need an organ, forever, requiring us to choose between life for some rich people against keeping some sense of our own morals and ethics. If we discard morals and ethics at the slightest problem, when the problem can be solved by switching some taxpayers monies from tanks and missiles to organ research, then we may be prematurely ditching them. And be poorer for it.

6. Anyway, I have not thought much about this. So bye before I run foul of the word count. I may return later.

Robert,
I can’t comment on the politics… I just hope they change soon. :P

For point 5, the search for artificial(?) organ research, will go on. The Iran model only address kidney, which humans have a spare. For hearts, liver, etc, everyone only has one. Only cadaveric donors can give these organs.

p.s maybe you are referring to tissue engineering instead of artificial organ research? i.e clone an organ from your own cells. Now only simple things like blood vessel, skin, can be done. Organs still too complicated.

patriot,
As mentioned in my previous posts, HOTA is still needed for other organs. Laws can be specific/selective, and allow specific organs for trading. Personally, I won’t want to see people selling dead relatives’ organs.

HOTA is essentially a copy of the Spanish model, where there are teams(?) waiting to ask (the grieving party) to donate dead person’s organs. Just that while they are opt in (albeit last minute), our is the opt out model. Seeing how people complained that the doctors were being insensitive (somewhat recent news), much as I would not like to admit it, without HOTA, there wouldn’t be any cadaveric donations…

MadHatter, to your comment, and others who also commented that

“our criminal justice system favours the rich over the poor.”

Cynical as my view may be, the modern justice system of almost any country in the world will always favour the rich, as they have access to the best lawyers. The poor too, often being less educated, typically has no idea how to manipulate the system.

RH: Dear 13,
1. Everything about science including medicine starts off impossible, then almost impossible, then extraordinarily difficult, then experimentally interesting, then lucky breakthroughs, then occasional success, then easy success, then routine success, then research lab standard procedure, then hospital research procedure, then hospital standard procedure, then standard consultant operation, then taught to freshmen, then available at your corner GP clinic.

2. All it takes is time, money and enough research practitioners. If we all [world] buy less tanks and missiles to do this, it will happen. We have landed on the moon, remember? Decoded our genome, too.

3. Too often, govts decide on the wrong priorities. Politicians, remember? The LIEgime is infamous for prioritising GDP numbers — and military overspending — still justifying it if I glimpse a headline days back. When govts really believe in democracy, human rights, rule of law, all this will change, but I am not hopeful. Right and Wrong is quaint in this age and time, but is still the operating principle of the universe.

I don’t see why the buyers should not be punished. How about people who purchase illegal drugs? People who pay for sex? Aren’t these buyers who get punished too? If there’s no demand, there’ll be no supply so if the buyers are more heavily punished and deterred, the supply will dry up.

have patience, guys. don’t expect everyone to get tried in the same trial. all in good time.

Basically does that mean that being rich can get away with anything?
While those who sell organs are being punished?
So that mean that those 2 risk losing their life to give their own organ to someone who could die without the transplant somehow got punished and the buyers are not investigated or fine???
Now we know…… and we are qaiting to see what happen next.

So, justice was quick and swift for the poor, weak and undefended but justice for the rich, powerful and smart takes a longer time?

What about the middlemen, the hospital, the surgeons, the rich people who put out the offer (the bait so to speak) to buy their kidneys in the first place?

Or have to be more cautious with investigations upon those rich, powerful and smart ones? Or may be there is no need for justice for those people at all?

Is this fair and just?

Is this really what Justice should be?

What kind of world are we living now?

What has Singapore become?

SINKAPORE???

we gotta get the little people and hang them. not the big people.
The little people were poor and driven to sell by poverty. That is an abuse of law.
The big people were sick, and driven to buy the organs. But they are rich, so it is no problem to Singaporeans, they are above the law.
Get it??
See how our new AG deals with this and see how it goes….. he talked about human rights – one for the rich, one for the poor.

RH: Dear 21,
1. You made a good call for new AG Walter WOON to prosecute.

2. Another criminal offence that AG should prosecute is LIE KY who committed the serious crime of perjury in court, when he lied about the Law Society receiving a praising letter from the IBA, both of which denied. So, perjury was clearly committed by LIE KY. He must go to jail.

That the legal culture in Singapore favours the rich and powerful is beyond doubt. The Leegime will claim that this is also evident in democractic countries where the rich use their wealth to outlast the less wealthy. However in Singapore the judges are appointed by the the Leegime on 2 to 3 years term. Neither is the police or the AG independent. So when it comes to cases involving the Leegime, the judges have no choice but to rule in favour of the Leegime or their preferences which are the wealthy and those connected to them. That the Leegime favours the rich and powerful is obvious. These are the people whom the Leegime has cultivated to set up base in Singapore. They give the Leegime less problem. The small people are full of problems so they are not welcome in Singapore.

“we gotta get the little people and hang them. not the big people.
The little people were poor and driven to sell by poverty. That is an abuse of law.
The big people were sick, and driven to buy the organs. But they are rich, so it is no problem to Singaporeans, they are above the law.
Get it??
See how our new AG deals with this and see how it goes….. he talked about human rights – one for the rich, one for the poor.”

that’s only the tip of the vast injustices suffered by the poor/average in the hands of the rich/elites. many others(a library of books out there) will be able to fill all the evil committed by the rich in whatever justification they can think of.

that is just one example why the lord of the good book is against the rich. and yet, the evil ones have sown a generation of worshipers (misled) embracing the prosperity gospel.

“we gotta get the little people and hang them. not the big people.”

you are right about that. it is in the book.

There is no redeeming quality about the rich.basically, the richer they are, the more cowardly they become because they have more to lose compared to let’s say, someone who has been made bankrupt or those with nothing to lose. That’s the reason why we seldom see the rich businessman, the successful CEOs, the rich academics, lawyers, doctors, public servants and the media leaders etc raise a ruckus on the rich poor divide and many other social injustices or the abuse of laws by the powers. Seldom and if at all, they have the guts to speak out against the double standard practiced by certain people.

We have a system that prevent corruption by paying the elites so well that it makes no sense for them to grow spine.

true true –
it sounds like Lee family aganist the Chee family, and how Today newspaper caught a whiff of the misquote from Davinder Singh (muderers, rapuist etc) and how the newspaper does not dare bring out the obvious errors within.
Rich vs poor, no one wants to lost their job at Today papers.
And we thought Today would be a notch above ST. What a shame.

Someone rightly said, the burden of proof is on the prosecutors to prove that the buyers had knowledge that the seller were selling their organs illegally. Add on to the fact that the buyers were going through a middleman, prosecutors’ job is not easy.

Now, we also got to weigh the $ involved in public funds to get these rich buyers to court and get punished, who will undoubtedly can afford the best lawyers. Therefore, the prosecutors will hesitate and think twice as civil servants.

There is no pure justice without costs in any legal system anywhere in the world. The fact is, there is a cost involved (and they are huge varying from country to country) and the only way the govt can do is to somewhat balance the playing field by appointing a legal counsel to help someone who cannot afford to. It is quite true that someone who gets into a court case can literally be paying to just about everyone in the court, from the judge to the lawyers down to the secretariat, including the fees for using the court too. You can say that the poor victim is paying huge $ to see a ‘live’ action of lawyers and judges. Some can probably drawing a parallel to seeing a live show of actors (the lawyers) with the director (the judge) in a prop (the court), with the awful possibility of footing fully all their “appearance fees” and “props” charges too.