Dignity of man by Rare 1 USA, LLC

The Dignity of Man by

David Birnbaum

November 21, 2011 New York

“Therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee”

- John Donne, London, 1623 “For Whom the Bell Tolls”

The Dignity of Man

1984 Setting the stage In 1984, China adopts the “Rules Concerning the Utilization of Corpses…” The rule provided that corpses or organs of executed prisoners could be “harvested” if – (a) no one claimed the body; or (b) the executed prisoner had volunteered it; or (c) the family consented. [source: The Bellagio Task Force Report on Transplantation, Bodily Integrity, and the International Traffic in Organs (www.icrc.org) Transplant Proceedings (1997;29;2739-45) as cited on site: Illegal Human Organ Trade from Executed Prisoners in China.]

1992 Truth, Compassion and Tolerance The Falun Gong spiritual movement founded in China in 1992. The mantra – and core doctrine – of the Falun Gong is: Truth, Compassion and Tolerance. Note that the Falun Gong has no temples, rituals of worship or religious hierarchy. A 10-20 minute meditation several times daily, is the salient spiritual practice.

2006 Industrial-scale mass-atrocity? In March 2006, the Falun Gong-affiliated Epoch Times Newspaper charges that China was conducting widespread and systematic organ harvesting of living Falun Gong practitioners. In July 2006, a human rights report, the Kilgour-Matas Report (a.k.a. The “Bloody Harvest” Report) [Google keywords: Kilgour-Matas Report wiki] was issued by Former Canadian Secretary of State David Kilgour and (Winnipeg-based) Civil Rights lawyer David Matas (Senior Legal Counsel of Bʼnai Bʼrith, Canada). 3

The report, paralleling the Epoch Times charges, concluded that large numbers [well-over 20,000 and counting] of Falun Gong practitioners were victims of systematic widespread organ harvesting throughout the Chinese prison system – while still alive. [Organ harvesting – whether legal or illegal – is the removal of organs from bodies for transplant.] The carefully-researched Kilgour-Matas Report accuses the Chinese government of imprisoning innocents – primarily Falun Gong prisoners of conscience – and of then selectively murdering them on the operating table, for their organs – with blood-type and related on-order – as various Chinese clinics put in specific orders for various organs for their local and international Clients.

2007 International pressure October: Bowing to international pressure, the Chinese Medical Association officially agrees to a moratorium on commercial organ harvesting from condemned prisoners, but does not specify any deadline (and has not done so to this date). [Google keywords: Organ transplantation wiki (section near end relating to “forced donation”)]

2008 The Chinese Corpses Legally legitimate? [For background, see Wikipedia article: Google keywords: Bodies: the Exhibition wiki]

Skinned & Preserved: Chinese Corpse Exhibitions in the USA February 14: ABC TV “20/20” program investigative piece concludes that a “black market” flourishes in China that supplies dead bodies – including those of executed prisoners – at a cost of $300 per corpse – to a company that preserves them for international exhibition – in skinned form. [Google keyword: Plastination wiki]

“The German doctor – Dr. Gunther von Hagens – (a.k.a. Dr. Frankenstein, according to Der Spiegel Magazine) who invented the process [“plastination”] – back in 1975 – that led to hundreds of bodies being put on display around the world says that he has stopped using bodies from China “because some of them may be those of executed prisoners.” He admitted this after Der Spiegel Magazine, Germany, published an expose that several of his cadavers had bullet holes in their skulls. Also note that – as of last report (Guardian.co.uk January 23, 2004) – he was living in the Chinese city of Dalian, which “is close to three Chinese prison camps, which are home to political detainees and members of the banned Falun Gong movement.” [Von Hagens c. 2010/2011 employed 200 workers to dissect and preserve his cadavers at his Dalian, China operation.]

In June 2008, the NY State Senate passed legislation regarding body parts exhibits. A bill that was sponsored by State Senator Jim Alesi requires that anyone showing an exhibit that uses real human bodies in NY museums produce a permit detailing their origins. However, the issue of “consent” (by the “donor” or his direct family) was not nailed-down by the legislation.

Winter, Spring, Summer 2011 Morally compromised? February 24, NYC: “Bodies: The Exhibition” re-opens in NY – at South Street Seaport. According to the exhibitor, Premier Exhibitions, all the bodies are unclaimed – and are from the Chinese police (their “origin”).

But, wait a second, are there not serious moral issues with all of this? # Does the fact that a body is “unclaimed” from the Chinese police, deny it the right to respectful burial? (We are using the term “burial” generically to mean burial or internment or cremation.) # Is this exhibition of corpses, not desecration of the dead? # Does not the desecration of any human body, on some level desecrate us all? # Would it not be potentially hazardous to oneʼs political and physical health, for a Chinese in China to claim an executed Falun Gong body from the Chinese police? Now, the two circumstances are of course different, but did many neighbors of Stalinʼs Gulag camps, rush-in to claim bodies of the executed? And, if the Stalinist government had shipped “certified” “unclaimed corpses” to, say, London, would that have given a British entrepreneur the right to commercially exhibit them in Central London? # Does this exhibition not send a further chilling warning to would-be dissenters-ofconscience across Asia? In the NY case, Premier Exhibitions has admitted that the plastinated corpses are “possibly the bodies of executed Chinese prisoners.” So, for context, according to Kilgour-Matas: First the Chinese deny the Falun Gong their universal rights to liberty – and to leading a spiritual life. Second, in prison they torture many of the Falun Gong and/or harvest their organs while they are alive. Third, the remains of the executed are sometimes ignobly desecrated.

Legitimizing desecration? Without drawing any moral or political equivalents between the two epochs, (now and the 1930s), in 1935-6, the Jews of America were adamant in 1935-6 that no legitimacy whatsoever be granted the Nazi regime – and the associated terror/degradation against the Jews. The Jews of that period demanded a boycott of the 1936 Olympics. Yet, literally on our doorstep in 2011 – at our own generally quite-charming South Street Seaport, downtown Manhattan – we find ourselves as practically the “enablers” of a different – but eerily resonant – in-your-face attack on the divinity of all mankind. How big a hit would a Premier Exhibition of 100+ unidentified plastinated Polish or Jewish-Polish corpses have made in NY in 1944? 7

Travesty on our doorstep?

“There is no such thing as meaningful consent to organ harvesting from a prisoner sentenced to death.”

- Source: Kilgour-Matas / “Bloody Harvest” Report Updated 31 January 2007

There are several questions relating to the above…. a) Even if the bodies are not Falun Gong, and “permission” (“consent”) was given pre-death by the subject, why are we displaying human corpses – New York City bus banner –advertisements included? b) And, in any event, why would we give legal “standing” to so-called “permission” (“consent”) by an isolated and condemned prisoner – to sell oneʼs own corpse for commercial display? What level of delusion are we operating on? c) And, in any event, what “documentation” are we talking about here? Photostats of Chinese prison documents allegedly signed by a broken and condemned man facing a Chinese firing squad – and then allegedly notarized by an anonymous notary – all controlled by a totalitarian state prison – somewhere in China – so that a by-now psychologically-devastated prisoner is promised some illusion? A quick death, perhaps? A chunk-of-change for his soon-to-be-widow, perhaps? d) Was this alleged “consent” – which Premier Exhibitions does not have in any event – secured from a free individual in a free land – or secured from a bedraggled prisoner broken in mind, body and spirit – and incarcerated deep within a totalitarian stateʼs far-flung prison apparatus? A seven-year-old observing this nightmare would not quickly grant legitimacy to the alleged “consent” of a doomed (political) prisoner secured while incarnated in some nefarious totalitarian prison system. e) And since the plastinated bodies just might be prisoners of conscience, are we not now positioned as “enablers,” as well, of the potentially (however possibly dramatically curtailed) probably ongoing inter-related degradation-abuse of the Falun Gong? – or of a random nameless/powerless Asian individual of any stripe – somewhere in some far-flung Asian prison?

f) The South Street Seaport bodies exhibition website www.BodiesTheExhibition.com trumpets that 200 human bodies and specimens are displayed [note – the figure is possibly exaggerated]. Since some, if not most, of these might include Falun Gong or other prisoner of conscience victims, are we not sending a message to Beijing that we simply do not care? And do we not thereby de facto potentially sentence additional innocents to degradation and/or atrocity? g) Is our proud American tradition of showing solidarity with victims of persecution/atrocity everywhere – to allow the commercial exploitation of the corpses of the totally powerless and nameless? By definition, does the whole enterprise not prey on the most powerless – whether in detention in prison, or homeless on the street? h) Are these plastinated corpses not emblematic of a constellation of abuse courtesy of untrammeled police-state power, wherever it may practice its dark craft globally? i) What happened to – the Dignity of Man ? the Sanctity of the Divine ? Reverence for the Deceased ? j) How are the Falun Gong in America and globally supposed to react to all this? Are there quite-legitimate and quite-serious concerns – and contemporary legacy of being victimized – to be cavalierly dismissed? Just how much despair needs to be dished-out to this group? How are they supposed to react to the $28.85 admission ticket price to view plastinated Asian corpses configured in various poses, often degrading to the dead? k) Morally, could we engage in a corpse-plastination-then-exhibition even if it were genuinely pre-authorized by a willing, free-and-able American citizen, complete with the blessing of his entire nuclear family? Does giving “consent” automatically grant license to any ghoulish request? l) So, if we cannot even turn-down a 2-bit commercially-driven exhibit – which smacks of abomination – maybe we are not as noble as we perceive ourselves to be? Maybe all that talk about The Age of Enlightenment was, shall we say, somewhat “premature”? m) But, you might say, “All in the name of science!?” Respectfully, we have heard that before… 11

Note: On Sunday, September 4, 2011, the BODIES Exhibition which I inspected at South Street Seaport for this piece, featured, among other goodies, a plastinated Asian male poised with a Wilson basketball in mid-shot… and plastinated female Asian figures reduced to a unique level of degradation…. (And, by-the-way, are Asians still “fair game” in America?) Frankly, I am diminished for having encountered/viewed the exhibition – even if it was just a 7-minute “experience.” And, with your indulgence, just a few additional questions here? # Is this a medical school-sponsored academic presentation for medical students, who must view bona fide cadavers for their course work – or is this something quite, quite different? # Is there any shortage of extraordinary digital multi-faceted representations of the human anatomy – whether online or otherwise – whether 3D or otherwise? [Google keywords: anatomy systems of the human body] Note: Google notes over 1,400,000 results.

# Are we talking about a meticulously and professionally prepared genuinely scientific American Museum of Natural History exhibit of plastinated reptiles – or a 42nd Street Madame Tussauds macabre vaudeville show – of torturemurdered prisoners of conscience? n) Maybe we should take a “second look” at the “official permit” – or some such – for that little South Street Seaport bodies exhibition? o) Maybe there are actually some limits to Free Trade with China?

September 2011 Is not our own legitimacy now at stake? So, as a finalé Truth, Compassion & Tolerance juxtaposed against a formidable regime and a quite-disturbing picture….. What are the moral imperatives here?

How far do we take it? At what point, if we do not intervene, are we ourselves complicitous? Do we now lend a hand? Do we extend our own power – - to reject a nefarious and diabolical paradigm of state abuse which these plastinated corpses have come to represent? - to protect the ultimate sanctity of these powerless entities? At what point, does acquiescence undermine our own legitimacy? Or, perhaps, do we re-assess the legitimacy of these exhibitions – and send a message to prisoners of conscience everywhere – that they are not totally forsaken. * As a final riposte, perhaps we should ask ourselves how we define ourselves as heirs to apathy – Hear No Evil; See No Evil? or as heirs to two great historic streams – Jeffersonian Democracy and a slightly older stream the corpus of Jewish law and tradition – The Masorah?

end -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------David Birnbaum is the author of the Summa Metaphysica philosophy series ( see www.SummaMetaphysica.com )

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