The Red Cross Society of China and the Ministry of Health Tuesday announced the launch of an organ donation system in 10 provinces and cities in a pilot initiative to speed up organ transplants.

The pilot regions are the provinces of Liaoning, Zhejiang, Shandong, Guangdong and Jiangxi and the cities of Tianjin, Shanghai, Xiamen, Nanjing and Wuhan.

They will start promoting organ donations, while setting up a registry system for donors and a distribution system for recipients, the two agencies said at a meeting in Shanghai. (Xinhua)

So will this stop all those weird paranoid fantasies some folks in the West have about Chinese organ farms, places where thousands of folks are kept barely alive in Coma-like sterile facilities until such a time as some rich guy/Party member, after destroying his own liver/heart/lungs, decides to make a withdrawal from the organ bank?

No, I don’t think so either. Those stories will continue regardless of how the system is reformed.

Seriously, though, I wonder how popular organ donation will be here under the new system. Some programs run afoul of culture/religion, and I believe China does have some cultural issues that have been blamed for organ shortages in the past (i.e. ????).