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Originally posted by fishbuff:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/02/worgans02.xml
Singapore's compulsory organ transplants
By Sebastien Berger, South East Asia Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:03am GMT 03/03/2007
As Sim Tee Hua lay on life support in a Singapore hospital, seven of his relatives knelt crying on the floor before the doctors, begging them not to remove his organs and give him a chance for a miracle recovery.
Their desperate pleas were to no avail and after police and hospital security staff were called in to restrain them, Mr Sim, 43, was rolled away to the operating theatre to expire.
"The hospital staff were running as they wheeled him out of the back door of the room," said Sim Chew Hiah, one of his sisters. "They were behaving like robbers."
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The previously healthy lorry driver was already brain-dead after suffering a stroke at work, followed by a cerebral haemorrhage in Singapore General Hospital. The harvesting surgeons had waited for 24 hours, but although his family still clung to hopes that he could recover, Singaporean law assumes all citizens except Muslims are willing organ donors unless they have explicitly opted out.
As a way to tackle the perennial shortage of organs that all developed societies face it has proved effective - kidney transplant rates have tripled since the measure was brought in - but it is also a policy that exemplifies the authorities' paternalistic attitude towards the people.
Nonetheless the spectacle of a distraught family abasing themselves in a futile attempt to win an extra day's grace for their son and brother has triggered a rare debate in the city-state, with the letters pages of its newspapers filled with comments for and against.
"Tears would roll down from his eyes when we spoke to him, telling him not to give up," Mr Sim's brother Tee Yong, 49, told the New Paper.
"We know that medically a brain-dead person cannot wake up. But we did not want to give up hope. All we asked for is just one more day for a miracle to happen."
Justine Burley, a bio-ethicist at the National University of Singapore, said the opt-out policy on donation was "fundamentally a good idea" but allowances had to be made on a case-by-case basis and relatives' mental trauma taken into consideration.
"The spectre of family members down on their knees begging the doctors is almost too much to bear from a human standpoint," she said.
Singapore's media generally follow the government line, and the Today newspaper yesterday implicitly rebuked the relatives, referring to the harvest taking place "in spite of a ruckus created by his family members".
In an article headlined: "Postponement killed dreams of liver transplant patients" it quoted the health minister Khaw Boon Wan telling parliament that the single 24-hour delay they had been granted rendered Mr Sim's liver unusable, although his kidneys and corneas had been transplanted.
"We try our best to be compassionate, but the bottom line is we need to be firm with this opting-out policy and respect the wishes of the dead," he said. "People have a choice to opt out and if they don't, we assume that they must have no objections."
Economically Singapore is a huge success, and Lee Wei Ling, a doctor and the daughter of the country's founding father Lee Kuan Yew, called for the buying and selling of organs to be legalised.
"Organ trading is frowned upon and usually not allowed in countries where political correctness reigns," she wrote. "If monetary incentive makes a potential living donor more willing to save another life, what is wrong in allowing that?" Her suggestion was described as "wrong" by Alastair Campbell, the Chen Su Lan professor of medical ethics at the National University of Singapore, because of the "inevitable exploitation that would be involved".
"The sellers are always going to be the desperate poor," he said, adding that "to trade the human body as some sort of material possession like a car or house" was crossing an unacceptable line.
Mr Sim's parents have been offered reduced hospital fees for five years, and the family have been sent a letter thanking them for their "generous organ donation".
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Originally posted by MyPillowTalks:It all started.......8 years ago, where HTML was firstly written and tested, where the internet was a new technology. Every single day, from every single HDB flats, u can here the consistant dialing from the classic 56kbps modem, dialing and dialing day and night, sometimes, you can even see them flying out of the windows, thrown by angry users who just cant connect to the interet.
Then, in a faraway land, Jeyel Media (UK) Limited was developed, tons of HTML was written everyday, PHPbb, all sorts of languages you can think of, was written, compiled and tested. One fine day, Jason clicked the 'publish' button, and there is was, fresh like titanic when it was first seen, <> Singapore's First Online Forum was born.
Finally, some managed to get online, they were so excited, when IE4/netscape shows: www.pacific.net.sg/www.singtel.com. Millions scream for joy, Just then, the least un expected happened, the worst thing you can think of...a member of the family picked up the phone and start dialing, dialing for their death....
One by one, the internet was disconnected, the angry users strangled the telephone users, and then, they got online again.
Looking for other singaporeans, they waited 5mins for the search engine to load, then longer wait, to see the results showing "sgforums" Thousands clicked, thousands of modem blinked like mad, and there....all registered one by one, taking a looonngg time.
One pass on to the other, more and more signed up, Jason realise it is a good opurtunity, the lucky one, FIREICE, was being appointed, and then, had a moderator's banner placed over...
SO, over the years, when ISPs came up with 256 kbps, 512kbps, 1mbps, people start signing up for them, no more DC after telephone usage....
And now, we have 23mbps
internet around since 1993 lah...NUS or NTU alread had i think
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Originally posted by kengkia:
....what
the....??? was it a
teen cat or fully adult cat?...wa piang??...what actually
happened...?like i said crows are evil....and they are source of
evil....!!!maybe who lot of them be under 18 feets of hell
forever!!!i saw them attack the cat..the cat eating the ta pow food ppl let for him, then the crows come and try to steal
Edited by JayJay3335 01 Jan `08, 5:15PM
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