Retail tycoon Tang Wee Sung was sentenced to one day in jail and fined S$17,000 (US$11,813) by a Singapore court for trying to buy a kidney and lying about it in a case that has forced lawmakers to rethink a ban on organ trading.
District Court Judge Ng Peng Hong said yesterday he took into consideration Tang’s poor health in sentencing the 56-year-old former head of CK Tang Ltd, one of the city-state’s oldest department store chains.
Tang’s case made front-page news, highlighting the plight of kidney-failure patients in a country where twice as many sufferers join transplant waiting lists as there are organs available.
The trial also sparked debate over the ethics of buying body parts and the feasibility of a regulated market that could circumvent profiteering from the trade.
“The Tang case has provided a platform for Singapore society to consider these matters,” said Eugene Tan, assistant professor of law at Singapore Management University, in an interview yesterday. “This case could provide the avenue for the government to influence public opinion.”
Singapore has the fifth-highest incidence of kidney failure in the world, the National Kidney Foundation said.
Kidney patients wait five to 17 years for a replacement organ, and 84 transplantation candidates were removed from lists last year because they had either died, became too old or too sick for surgery.
Tang’s diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and blood clots worsened his prognosis and precluded him from joining the waiting list, his lawyers said. An attempt to obtain a transplant overseas also failed.
He was removed last Thursday as executive chairman of the company his father created in 1932 after pleading guilty to entering into an illegal, S$300,000 contract to buy a kidney earlier this year. Tang also pleaded guilty to making a false statutory declaration that the donor, an Indonesian, who was to receive 150 million rupiah (US$16,280), was a relative.
The kidney was never transplanted and Tang remains on daily dialysis. Had the deal proceeded, those who helped broker it would have benefited most.
“Criminalizing organ trading does not eliminate it,” Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan told parliament on July 21. “It merely breeds a black market with the middleman creaming off the bulk of the compensation, which the grateful patient is willing to offer.”
Eighty kidneys become available for transplantation in Singapore each year, compared with 200 patients deemed suitable to receive one.
Khaw said he is working to address the deficit, starting with fighting diabetes and expanding organ donations.
Legalizing the payment of donors, a practice outlawed everywhere except Iran, isn’t ruled out.
“By forcing ourselves to think about unconventional approaches, we may be able to find an acceptable way to allow meaningful compensation for some living unrelated kidney donors, without breaching ethical principles and hurting the sensitivities of others,” Khaw told parliament.
Ideally, such a mechanism could defray donors’ costs and needn’t be construed as kidney trading, Khaw told a diabetes meeting in Singapore last month.
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
DIALOGUE: US president-elect Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform confirmed that he had spoken with Xi, saying ‘the call was a very good one’ for the US and China US president-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) discussed Taiwan, trade, fentanyl and TikTok in a phone call on Friday, just days before Trump heads back to the White House with vows to impose tariffs and other measures on the US’ biggest rival. Despite that, Xi congratulated Trump on his second term and pushed for improved ties, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The call came the same day that the US Supreme Court backed a law banning TikTok unless it is sold by its China-based parent company. “We both attach great importance to interaction, hope for
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
CYBERSCAM: Anne, an interior decorator with mental health problems, spent a year and a half believing she was communicating with Brad Pitt and lost US$855,259 A French woman who revealed on TV how she had lost her life savings to scammers posing as Brad Pitt has faced a wave of online harassment and mockery, leading the interview to be withdrawn on Tuesday. The woman, named as Anne, told the Seven to Eight program on the TF1 channel how she had believed she was in a romantic relationship with the Hollywood star, leading her to divorce her husband and transfer 830,000 euros (US$855,259). The scammers used fake social media and WhatsApp accounts, as well as artificial intelligence image-creating technology to send Anne selfies and other messages
RSS