Beauty aid is skin
deep in China

The United Kingdom's Guardian newspaper reports that a Chinese cosmetics company is using the skin of executed prisoners to make collagen and for the development of other beauty products. Collagen is a favorite of plastic surgeons to puff up lips like bicycle tires and get rid of wrinkles.

Actually, I was just kidding when I suggested that collagen made from skin harvested from executed prisoners injected into lips might make the patients ono for Chinese food. That was in bad taste. But when it comes to bad taste, the Chinese cosmetic companies take the cake, or at least the pancake makeup. In the United States, a debate rages over whether there should be capital punishment at all. In China, not only has capital punishment been warmly embraced (firing squads being the preferred method of dispatching miscreants), it apparently is providing a ready supply of body parts used for transplants, cornea replacement and, now, making Westerners look younger and sexier.

CHINESE OFFICIALS officially, or at least, officiously, deny that body parts are taken from executed prisoners without their consent. If you believe that, it isn't much different from Americans becoming voluntary organ donors. Except, when Americans donate their organs, they aren't staring down a rifle barrel.

But the Guardian says a Chinese cosmetic company agent speaking to someone he believed was a Hong Kong businessman, bragged that "Clients are quite surprised that China can manufacture the same human collagen for less than 5 percent of what it costs in the West."

To use the skin of executed prisoners, the agent told the undercover UK researcher, "a certain fee .... has to be paid to the court."

Peter Butler, a UK plastic surgeon, said transplant centers are set up next to execution grounds in China where bodies are cut up for parts immediately after executions.

"I can see the utility of it, as they have access and no ethical objection," he said.

Animal rights groups like PETA, upset that animals are harvested for their skins and used for testing by cosmetic companies, will have their hands full in China. As Westerners continue to prolong their youth with the skin of executed prisoners, can PETP (People for the Ethical Treatment of People) be far behind?