The body is a state of mind. Everything that comprises the body: the heart, kidney, lungs, eyes contributes to a state of mind. An injury to a single part of the body can disfigure not just the body but can mar that state of mind, as well. The state of mind resembles a sense of ownership. Too many people spend their lives secure in the thought that their body is theirs alone to do as they please with it. This state of mind suffers a jolt when realisation strikes that a part of the body is dysfunctional and has to be replaced. David Kilgour, a former member of the Canadian Parliament and his partner, Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas were not thinking about all this when they brought out a report laying out the details of an investigation they undertook on behalf of a Falun Gong support group, the Coalition to investigate the Persecution of the Falun Gong in China. The source of some 41,500 organ transplants in China in the years 2000 through 2005 remains unexplained, leading to the possibility that they may be the result of the execution of Falun Gong members, the report says. While the report has been called “totally fake” by a spokesman from the Chinese embassy in Washington, it still doesn’t explain the occurrence of so many organ transplants in a country where a new law, banning sales of human organs and requiring donors to give written permission for their organs to be transplanted came into effect only from July 1.  

When Teresa came to know that she needed a kidney transplant, her world was not quite shattered. She realised the considerable implications of such a statement and how having such an operation could help her live longer. About 17000 transplants that included all organs and not just the kidney were done in 2005 in America alone. The only problem was the source of the kidney. Identifying a kidney donor was a tedious process that required several tests to ensure that her body would accept the organ and that the operation wouldn’t be a failure. Thus began the long wait. Sometimes, she would get a call only to be informed later that the organ was not the right match because the donor had been HIV-positive or the organ had not been kept in the right kind of ‘storage’ and thus the organ was ‘wasted’. Living with a dysfunctional organ disturbs the state of mind as you have to live with the constant feeling that your body is not perfect. Till such a time, you think you own your body. 

Then one day she got a call. The call was from an international organisation that helped patients find the right donors. Teresa was told that at last there was a matching kidney and she would soon have an operation. Teresa got this news in December and the operation was scheduled for January. Soon after the operation, the doctors advised her to take certain precautions. She seemed quite cheerful and agreeable to the idea of a transplant and hence the doctors didn’t think it necessary to refer her to a psychiatrist.

Six months after the operation, she got up from a nightmare and realised that her body was not hers alone. The suddenness of the realisation surprised her more than the realisation itself. That she had someone else’s kidney and that she didn’t know who the someone else was left her with a feeling of disquietude. She decided to trace her donor and called up the agency that had arranged for the organ. The agency refused to divulge any details about the organ donor citing confidentiality as the reason. She sought the help of a journalist friend who decided to act on her behalf. After a year of hard and in some cases, dangerous work that involved getting access to ‘confidential’ records, the journalist traced the source of Teresa’s kidney to China.

Kilgour and Matas got a call in September. Teresa had read about their report in the Christian Science Monitor and as a patient, who had recently undergone a kidney transplant, especially in the light of her journalist friend’s startling findings, called them up. The possibility of her kidney coming from a Falun Gong practitioner was high and this thought made Teresa uneasy. She had not bargained for forced ownership of someone else’s body, an executed Falun Gong practitioner at that. Worse still, if it was true that her donor had been a Falun Gong practitioner, there was no way she could ever find out because the Chinese Government’s dealings with regard to most banned groups were shrouded in secrecy. David Kilgour couldn’t reassure her because he didn’t have the exact figures to back his claims.

Teresa’s life was being systematically destroyed by the plethora of possibilities that presented themselves to her. Her kidney functioned in a perfectly normal way but she was haunted by only one thought: what had happened to her donor? At times, she could see her donor languishing in a Chinese jail. At other times, she could see his dead body in her dreams. She felt guilty for the privilege of a few more years and at the same time was distraught by the parasitic existence, she thought, she led. While she had the option of having the transplant, her donor had no option but to give up his kidney. To extract someone else’s organs forcibly or harvest them, as it was called, was barbaric and  was not too different from killing an elephant for his tusk and then discarding the beast’s body. What a waste of creation.

We will never know if Teresa ultimately found out about her donor but she never got the quality of life that the doctors had promised her. She didn’t feel complete and free from guilt. There is no sense of ownership and it was in many ways, similar to what the donor may have felt, had the organ come from a Falun Gong practitioner in China. When the state of mind is marred, the body becomes nothing more than a machine.

Sources: The above piece is about organ transplantation from the patient’s perspective. It is based on an article about a report by David Kilgour, a former member of the Canadian Parliament and his partner, Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas that appeared in the Christian Science Monitor on August 3, 2006.