 WHY CANADA IS CREEPY, PART 324: INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS If you need to know anything about Peter Kormos, the NDP Member of Provincial Parliament for the riding of Niagra Centre, it's that he's the political equivilent of a cockroach. This guy has been involved in almost nuclear fuck-up almost since the day he was first elected, including a number of protest related arrests, but nothing seems to kill his career. He once posed in a homo beefcake shot for Toronto's largest newspaper for people who can't read, which got him kicked out the cabinet of then premier Bob Rae. All that did was ensure that Kormos was one of the very few survivors of the almost apocalyptic drubbing the NDP was handed in 1995. Peter Kormos is a fucking vampire and holy water and wooden steaks have been in short supply in Ontario for far too long now. Kormos now has what might actually be the single most chilling political proposal I've ever heard before the Ontario legislature. He actually wants to give the government the power to steal your internal organs immediately upon your death. How far should the government go to get more people to donate organs for thousands of Canadians awaiting transplants?
That sensitive question is being asked in Ontario now that two MPPs are proposing radically different answers in private members' bills.
One would allow hospitals to harvest organs from dead patients who have not clearly stated whether they wish to donate — a somewhat controversial concept known as presumed consent.
The bill was resurrected yesterday by New Democrat Peter Kormos (Niagara-Centre) after it failed to catch on last year. Kormos said it's wasteful to let people in need of transplants suffer or die when perfectly good organs "are being buried with their former owners and left to rot in the ground."
Wow. Let's overlook the concept of "presumed consent" for a second. Don't worry, I'll get back to it. This proposal is so bizarre and ghoulish that only one country in the world, the People's Republic of China, actually admits to it. It is widely known that China harvests the organs of those they execute. This is why they carry out capital punishment by the method they do, a small calibre bullet to the brain stem. This makes the prsoner sufficently dead but does not blow away any organs. The organs are immediately harvested and believed to be sold on the open market or donated to China's nomenclature. As one can imagine, the practice has been protested vigourously by every Western democracy and a legion of human rights organizations. The obvious linkage between China's extensive use of the death penalty and the country's burgeoning organ trade and transplant program has attracted mounting international attention and alarm. In 1993, the U.N. Committee Against Torture formally asked the Chinese government "whether the death sentence might not constitute a form of cruel and unusual punishment...[and] whether the bodies of persons executed could be used for the purpose of organ transplants."(2) Later the same year, a report on the British government's first human rights delegation to China officially called upon the Chinese government to produce "a code of conduct for executions which prohibits...the use of organs from executed prisoners for spare part surgery."(3) An estimated 2,000 to 3,000 organs (mainly kidneys and corneas) from prisoners each year are used in this manner, with government officials reportedly receiving priority in their allocation. While the actual numbers are unknown, the Chinese government admits to harvesting some 20, 000 kidneys from condemed criminals, according to CNN. As CNN also points out, no other regime on Earth, no matter how brutal, engages in the practice. Well, China might soon have company if Peter Kormos gets his way. If anything, what is being debated in Ontario is even worse than what China is doing. The Chinese "donors" at least recieve what passes for a trial in that country. The government in Beijing also at least puts forward a charade that the condenmed have consented to the harvesting. Because Canada does not have a death penalty, the harvesting would not be limited to condemned criminals. Nor would there be any kind of review, judicial or otherwise. All that is required is a fresh corpse, which we will all someday be. Under the Kormos bill, doctors wouldn't be compelled to ask the deceased's family or presumably even notify them. This where the concept of "presumed consent" comes in. Under the Kormos bill, unless you were carrying documentation that explicity said that you do not want your organs harvested, the government could presume that you don't mind. Of course, that overlooks the fact if you're an Orthodox Jew, a pious Muslim, a Christan Scientist or a Jehova's Witness, your faith already explicitly prohibits organ donation. But the dead aren't exactly famous for raising religious objections to things, and religion has always been a big pain in the NDP's ass. Furthermore, presumed consent is not something that is allowed to be practiced by the government against the people under any other circumstances. Let's, for example, assume that the police show up at your home without a warrant and you're either out or sleeping. Just because you don't explicitly refuse a request to conduct a search doesn't mean that they can presume that you would consent to one. I'm not going to bother arguing that the Kormos bill is unconstitutional, because it's not. It is generally accepted that you citizen is forfits constitutional protections upon death. Rights are for those that can understand and exercise them, which the dead obviously cannot do. This isn't unconstitutional, but it is wildly immoral. It is a gross violation of the human dignity of those who would oppose it, but cannot due to the fact that they're dead. It further violates the rights of survivors who, as a matter of both law and tradition, have enjoyed the right to dispose of the their loved one's remains as they see fit. In the world according to Kormos, you would automatically forfit any religious or cultural sensitivities the moment you had the bad fortune to die in Ontario. This is a further example of the Mommy State, whereby the one sacrifices for the benefit of the many, whether they like it or not. For all intents and purposes, Ontario's collectivist representatives (and I should note that the Minister of Health, Liberal George Smitherman supports the Kormos bill), assume control of your internal organs when you die. This is something that the Soviet Union didn't do under Joseph Stalin. As a general rule, I support organ donation. However, I should emphasize the "donation" part of the phrase. That someone like Kormos can litterally steal your organs and still refer to as a donation clearly highlights the confused relationship socialists have with the English language. How can the left fight so vigourously about "choice", "freedom", and "personal dignity of the individual" in the great abortion debate, yet disregard it when it comes to the most personal and intimate moment of all, their death? And that, folks, is why I distrust big government regardless of ideology. Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Cold Ethel. By: Alice Cooper. From: Welcome to my Nightmare Permalink
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