Dead and Wounded Iraqis being used as Organ Donors (from ATSNN)

Secret intelligence reports from Europe surfaced last December indicating that American physicians are following US soldiers into combat in order to perform organ extractions from dead and wounded insurgents. These alllegations have been widely circulated in the Mid East.



This sounds like another urban (warfare) legend, but is just slimy enough to possibly be true. Capitalism can become a true beast in the hunt for a quick profit, and ethics/morality can get pushed aside in the heat of battle, where fresh, pricey organs have a short shelf life.

Related News Links:
www.inthebullpen.com
www.thetruthseeker.co.uk
www.aim.org

Oh Please....

I heard that Islamics are eating the hearts of American soldiers killed in Iraq. They have a secret cabal of religious leaders that follow the insurgents and perform ritual removal of the hearts and spleens of US soldiers, the organs are taken to a holy place and ground into powder that's made into unleavened bread and fed to their "warriors of god".

See, I can make up stuff too.

Just because you don't want it to be true doesn't mean it isn't. This story is way more likely to be true than your admittedly false and ridiculous fabrication. How many daredevil young surgeons out there with huge med-school loans coming due wouldn't give this a try? How much would you pay for it, and what would you care about where it came from, if you needed a new liver or kidney to survive? Think it over.

I doubt this would be ture, why don't they interview US soldiers and ask them if someone ever do soemthing like this. No one is going to the middle of a battlefield to do this stuff lol

Likely an urban myth as suggested, like the rumour about US soldiers having x-ray glasses.

Im sure the logistics of transporting organs all the way to the US are somewhat inpractical.

Haha...this is so fake. If this were true we would have heard of it long ago. Someone would have spoke about a bunch of dead bodies with stitches over were the kidney would be removed from, or the heart and any other organ you can think of.

I know plenty of people over in Iraq, even a few medics and I have not heard anything about this, not that that's reason enough, I just can't imagine something like this going unnoticed. BS story..IMO

EDIT: Unfortuneatly I can choose only one reason when I vote "NO"...I chose the source as being the reason for my vote.

[edit on 26/6/2005 by SportyMB]

:shk: someones blog is hardly a news source :shk:

:shk: And its from last December :shk:



[edit on 6/26/05 by FredT]

First I apologize to the author of this piece. I had to give it a no vote for the story for the following reasons.
1) The story is over 6 months old.
2) your own sources debunk the story and have labeled it as propaganda

It is an interesting peice though and fits right along with the story of Israeli Soldiers are stealing the eyes of Palestinians

I know this is fringe stuff and nobody wants to believe it could be true. I considered just posting it directly to Urban Legends on BTS, but thought I would give it a go here. I have become cynical enough to wonder if it might not be true afterall. I did read it in Harper's Magazine this morning, for all that's worth.

Originally posted by ulshadow
I doubt this would be ture, why don't they interview US soldiers and ask them if someone ever do soemthing like this. No one is going to the middle of a battlefield to do this stuff lol

Maybe because its confidantial.

and it could be true people these days will do anything for money

The author of the quoted article is ignorant of a few basic facts:

The person needs to be alive (brain dead but alive) for harvesting to take place. This means on a ventalator, plus IV drugs for maintaing blood pressure, and often antibiotics.

The workup for a donor takes time. The donor has to be typed, condition of organs determined and then matches found.

The organs are harvested and shipped out by the specific team taking the organ. IE the kidney team travels with the organ they harvested. Livers can be split with the smaller lobe going to a pediatric patient etc.

This requires not just the use of an OR room and a guy with a knife, but several teams and the numbers can get high. Once in the OR, I witnessed no less than 40 people involved and they took 2 kidneys, heart lung, liver, and small bowel. It took a bit of time.

The organs have a finite amount of time to be transplanted before they are considered bad.

While it is fun to vilify US efforts in Iraq and make it out like we are stealing organs etc, this is simply a campaign to spread fear etc.

Originally posted by FredT
The author of the quoted article is ignorant of a few basic facts:

The person needs to be alive (brain dead but alive) for harvesting to take place. This means on a ventalator, plus IV drugs for maintaing blood pressure, and often antibiotics.

The workup for a donor takes time. The donor has to be typed, condition of organs determined and then matches found.

The organs are harvested and shipped out by the specific team taking the organ. IE the kidney team travels with the organ they harvested. Livers can be split with the smaller lobe going to a pediatric patient etc.

This requires not just the use of an OR room and a guy with a knife, but several teams and the numbers can get high. Once in the OR, I witnessed no less than 40 people involved and they took 2 kidneys, heart lung, liver, and small bowel. It took a bit of time.

The organs have a finite amount of time to be transplanted before they are considered bad.

While it is fun to vilify US efforts in Iraq and make it out like we are stealing organs etc, this is simply a campaign to spread fear etc.

Maybe its for experment use not donation.

They could do that with the prisoners. You seen what they done to them so they could do worst by torturing them that way

Maybe not as extravagant as the original link claims but still, the black market organ trade has made it's way from Turkey, Brazil, India, Sth Africa all the way to Baghdad.

It's not a far stretch from these established facts to say there are people in the battlefield harvesting organs from dead and dying Iraqi's for use in labs. Doubtful they'd be used for anything more than experiments but why experiments and tests should seem outlandish is surprising unless you can't fathom US labs having dark secrets.

If it were true that this has occured (not a everday thing), i'd imagine it would be because of weapons used in those parts of Iraq. A new chemical weapon used by America would result in deaths to Iraqi's which would make their organs very valuable for further testing and research into new weapon design to see what affect it had and how it can be identified. Iraq is largly a testing ground for military operations and crowd control as well as many other things.

Black market organ trade is Baghdad's new growth industry
By Saleh Al Jibouri in Baghdad and Colin Freeman

Ali Hameed quit his job as a taxi driver because he no longer felt safe on Baghdad's streets. Increasingly desperate for money to help him get married, he hit on a once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity - selling one of his kidneys.

Last week, in a shabby ward in the city's Al Karama hospital, he lay bandaged on a bed, one kidney lighter and $1,400 (about £765) richer after a three-hour operation.

www.telegraph.co.uk.../news/2005/05/22/wirq22.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/05/22/ixworld.html

Not to blame the US for this but ironically enough, many of these black market organs from Iraq may just end up themselves in Patriotic bodies for lack of any other option:

Organ Shortage Fuels Illicit Trade in Human Parts
Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic Ultimate Explorer
January 16, 2004

"In 2002 U.S. doctors performed 24,900 lifesaving organ transplants. That's the good news. But for every person lucky enough to receive a transplant, two others are added to a waiting list that now features more than 80,000 people in the U.S. alone. As desperation grows, so may an illicit trade in human organs in much of the developing world."
news.nationalgeographic.com...






[edit on 27-6-2005 by TheShroudOfMemphis]

Originally posted by FredT
The person needs to be alive (brain dead but alive) for harvesting to take place. This means on a ventalator, plus IV drugs for maintaing blood pressure, and often antibiotics.

This story is so fake. I was going to say everything FredT said,
but he beat me to it. Good job FredT!

It is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE for soldiers to be harvesting organs from
dead Iraqis. Impossible. For all the reasons FredT said.

If I had some applause left, I'd give it to ya' FredT.

Originally posted by TheShroudOfMemphis
It's not a far stretch from these established facts to say there are people in the battlefield harvesting organs from dead and dying Iraqi's for use in labs.

Oh yes it is! It's a VERY far stretch. The soldiers don't have the knowledge
of how to harvest organs let alone the equipment or the time. The
organs have to be properly harvested or the organ becomes useless.
TIME is a big factor. Within minutes of the person being dead the organs
become useless.

This story is just more anti-American foolishness.

All of these desperate attempts to debunk this story just serve to make it more plausible. I admit its very unlikely that these organs are being used for transplants, but its not IMPOSSIBLE. It is quite possible that organ harvesting is taking place, as suggested, to determine the effectiveness of experimental weapons. It is also quite possible that organs are being harvested for ongoing research. The shortage of organs for transplants and research is well documented. What better place to procure them than Iraq, where nobody can keep track of all the people getting killed and going missing every day?

The military has all kinds of specialized battlefield teams, why not an organ harvesting team? The combat team makes a sweep through an area, engages the enemy, overruns his position, secures the area, and calls in the harvest team. They could even be disguised as a 'battle damage assessment team', or whatever. All of this could take place in a matter of minutes. Wounded combatants can survive for hours, depending on the severity of their injuries.

I'm not Anti-American. I love the idea of America, land of the free, home of the brave. Unfortunately, that is not the country I see around me today. Today, its more like Amerika, land of the greedy, home of the naive. I know there are still a lot of brave, free folks out there, and we need to step forward and take this country back from the global corporations and special interest lobbies that are selling us down the river of ruin. If that is being un-American, then so be it.

Icarus Rising,
How are the responses that debunk the story desperate? They all state the facts that as the story that was posted states that the military has medical teams that go into an area and steal organs from the dead to be used American hospitals. Since the Hippocratic Oath

I will keep them from harm and injustice.

Hippocratic Oath

No medical facility would accept these body parts. Nor would they use them for any purpose weather it be for teaching or experimentation.

As to the statement:

It is quite possible that organ harvesting is taking place, as suggested, to determine the effectiveness of experimental weapons. It is also quite possible that organs are being harvested for ongoing research. The shortage of organs for transplants and research is well documented. What better place to procure them than Iraq, where nobody can keep track of all the people getting killed and going missing every day?

Testing of experimental weapons upon dead tissue would be useless to researchers. The composition and functions of body organs change radically after death which is why dead organs cannot be used for transplant operations.

The sources that you used, also decry this information and all have concured that it is only Anti-American propaganda. I am not saying that you are but the story is. This story would be a better fit for the heading of urban legend rather than fact.

I don't know about harvesting organs in the battlefield, but I do know that organ trafficking is a thriving business. I bet there is some sort of operation going on in Iraq.

On the other hand we shouldn't fully disqualify this battlefield harvesting so fast. I found a testimony of Wang Guoqi, former doctor at a Chinese People's Liberation Army Hospital. He said that doctors were harvesting kidneys in an ambulace and the proceedure was very fast. He wasn't specific on duration of harvesting this organ dough.

Here's a Link

I'm only speculating here, not accusing.

Originally posted by Icarus Rising
All of these desperate attempts to debunk this story just serve to make it more plausible. I admit its very unlikely that these organs are being used for transplants, but its not IMPOSSIBLE.

What desperate attempts? What data would they be getting from these organs? Gee they are dead it worked. What of the embeded reporters. Don't you think the press would have been over this like flies on stink?

Don't unpack that Pulitzer just yet for the source all of this is coming from :shk:

I just used the word desperate to mess with you debunkers.

As for the Hippocratic Oath, maybe land of the naive doesn't just apply to America, unless, of course, you are a US citizen, Kenshiro2012. If you are re-assured that doctors are looking out for your best interests, and not their own, then the Oath has done its job.

To clarify, if an experimental weapon was used, the military might take organ samples from the casualties to gauge the results, like what organs are affected and how, so they can compare them to the expected outcome.

Embedded reporters? They are assigned to units so they are not at large and free to roam about (for their own protection, of course), and they see only what the military wants them to see. Get too curious or do too good a job actually reporting, and you might get a pulmonary embolism and die or something. Get it?

Now, put your heads back in the sand, like good ostriches.