On this episode of China Uncensored,
China is jumping on the creepy
science experiment bandwagon,
and boy is it weird.
Welcome back to China Uncensored.
I’m Chris Chappell.
History is no stranger to
creepy science experiments.
The Nazis did them.
Imperial Japan did them, too.
And let’s not forget Dr. Frankenstein.
And, you know, the great thing about being
an authoritarian country without mechanisms
for public oversight,
is there aren’t that many restrictions
when it comes to experimenting on animals...
and people.
So today we bring you
the top 5 creepy Chinese science experiments
sure to send shivers down your spine.
Number 5: Cloning
First, there was Dolly.
“I’m Dolly, I’m a sheep from Roslin,
and people like to make a big fuss
about the fact that I’m a clown.
Clone!
Clone!”
Oh, Dolly, you’re so hilarious.
Dolly the sheep was the first ever animal
to be successfully cloned from an adult cell.
Now that’s a big deal because, well,
it proves that in theory,
the adult me that I know and love,
could create an exact copy of...myself.
Oh what’s that Dolly?
I mean Shelley?
Oh.
It turns out Dolly was a “lower order species”
and didn’t really prove I can clone myself.
But that’s changed now,
thanks to a recent experiment in China.
“Well scientists from Shanghai have done it again.
But this time,
they’ve cloned a couple of adorable
macaque monkeys.”
They’re named Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua,
which is a cute way of saying,
“Chinese nation.”
Because nothing says patriotism
like science experiments on monkeys
where most of them died.
Seriously, they implanted 79 embryos
and only 2 of them survived.
With results like that,
I definitely would have failed biology class.
Maybe there’s an easier way
for me to clone myself?
But anyway, technically,
these are not the first-ever monkey clones.
In 2000, scientists cloned a rhesus monkey
named Tetra.
But that was done using
the much simpler method
of splitting embryos.
This new experiment,
which was reported in January 2018,
is far more advanced.
According to one researcher,
this new technology could be used
to clone humans.
But don’t worry!
Researchers assure us they have
no intention of doing that.
“We will never try,
and I don’t think there’s anybody
are willing to do human cloning,
and society would not permit it.
But like any new technology,
once it appears,
there’s always the possibility of misuse.”
The misuse of technology for a sinister purpose?
The Chinese Communist Party would never allow that.
Let’s just focus on the good parts.
“But let’s be honest.
We just care that these lovable monkeys
are so darn cute.”
Awwww...
Number 4: Animal head transplant
Back in 2013,
a Chinese doctor became the first scientist
to take the head from one mouse
and “successfully” attach it
to the body of another.
“Ren says after having its head
placed onto a new body,
the mouse opened its eyes,
could breathe,
and make basic movements.”
Oh and then it died a day later.
What more could you ask for
in a successful surgery?
And Dr. Ren Xiaoping has conducted
over a thousand such “successful”
mouse head transplants.
An army of frankenmice.
Somehow, it’s still adorable.
But it turns out the good doctor
was just warming up.
All those rodents were just the appetizer
ahead of the main course––
a monkey head.
“Before we can transplant a head,
we connect it and the body
with a tube like this.
This ensures that when the head
is moved, the circulation isn’t cut.”
According to a 2016 report by the New Scientist,
Dr. Ren pulled off the daring feat…
I mean the head…
off a monkey and reattached it
to the body of another monkey.
The monkey survived,
but was only kept alive for 20 hours
after the procedure—
for ethical reasons, he said.
Which is to say,
“The monkey could totally have survived
longer it we wanted it to.
We swear.
It’s all about the ethics.”
Yes, frankenmonkeys are all about the ethics.
Let’s just move ahead, shall we?
Number 3: Human head transplant
Well, it turns out a monkey head wasn’t quite
headline material enough for Dr. Ren Xiaoping.
“The head transplant is the last
and greatest challenge of the human medical science.
We’ve never confronted it before.”
At a press conference in December,
his colleague,
Italian doctor Sergio Canavero,
dropped the bombshell.
“The surgery happened—successfully.”
Well if it’s the same kind of “successfully”
as with the mice and the monkey…
Oh wait.
What’s that?
“The first full rehearsal has taken place in China.”
A full rehearsal?
What does that mean?
“The surgery lasted 18 hours...”
Aaaannndddd....?
“In a few days, Xiaoping will announce
and will give you all the ins and outs.”
Oh, what an anti-climax.
Well it turns out Dr. Ren Xiaoping
did give all the ins and outs,
in this article in Surgical Neurology International.
First of all, just to let you know,
the experiment was approved by
a Chinese ethics board
and the families of the cadavers consented.
Still, I’m gonna need to see
a copy of those consent forms,
if you don’t mind.
But in conclusion, drum roll please…
Dr. Ren says that the test run head graft
was a great success!
And by success,
he meant both test subjects were dead.
No, the surgery didn’t kill them.
He just did the experiment on dead bodies.
So...take that “success” with a grain of salt.
So what exactly is the plan now?
“The next step is a full head transplant
on a brain-dead organ donor,
and the first human head transplant is imminent.”
So first a frankenmouse,
then a frankenmonkey,
and now a franken...stein?
I can’t wait.
Number 2: Easy organ “donation”
This creepy science experiment involves
figuring out how to use the internal organs
from prisoners executed by lethal injection.
Now, if you’ve been watching
China Uncensored for a while,
you’ve probably seen some episodes
about China’s organ donation program.
And for those of you who are new to the show,
in China, “donation” means they kill you
and take your organs.
A lot of China’s involuntary organ donors
are prisoners who are given the death penalty.
And in China you can be given the death penalty
for things like economic crimes.
But there’s a problem.
Prisoners are now executed
using lethal injection,
so the organs get poisoned too.
That means, after the transplant is done,
the host body often rejects the organ.
But thanks to the groundbreaking research
of one Wang Lijun,
China can continue to extract organs
from unwilling donors and not worry about a thing.
According to the China Organ Harvest Research Center,
“Wang Lijun carried out thousands
of what were effectively live human experiments”
and his team “made step-by-step scientific success
in making it possible for an organ to be accepted
by the recipient after lethal injections.”
By the way, Wang Lijun is not a scientist or a doctor.
He was a police chief who worked with
purged former CCP official Bo Xilai.
Wang is the guy that fled
to the US Consulate in 2012
and triggered a huge scandal that
exposed the factional fighting within the CCP.
And he’s now serving a 15-year prison sentence
for corruption.
Sounds like just the kind of guy
who should be working on
cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs
involving dicey ethical issues.
Wang’s research paved the way
for organ “donations” from
even more unwilling donors:
Prisoners of conscience,
like Falun Gong practitioners,
house Christians,
Uighurs, and Tibetans.
These are different from prisoners
given the death penalty,
since they are imprisoned for their beliefs
and then just quietly “disappeared”
into the system.
And according to reports,
there are a lot of them.
Yes, political prisoners can rest easy now,
knowing that the organs forcibly plucked
from their bodies will give the gift of life
to wealthy Chinese patients
without any poisonous side effects.
And number one:
Human body plastination
Plastination means taking human bodies
and turning them into human Ken and Barbie dolls
to be put on display for fun and profit.
Haha.
That looks like so much fun.
Chinese scientist Sui Hongjin learned
the creepy craft of plastinating human bodies
by teaming up with the creepy German anatomist
who invented the technique.
But the two parted ways and Sui Hongjin
later set up his own plant in China
and perfected the art-slash-science
of turning people into plastic.
He churned out human bodies set in all kinds of
bizarre poses and sold them to international exhibitions.
And he made a killing.
Well, actually someone else did the killing.
You see, Chinese people tend not to
donate their bodies to science.
Then where did all these bodies come from?
Well, at first Sui Hongjin implied they were donated.
Then he said he didn’t know.
Then, after a lawsuit,
the exhibitions were forced to put up a disclaimer,
saying that they got the bodies from the Chinese police.
And the police may have gotten them
from Chinese prisons.
So... probably no consent forms.
Can we go back to the frankenmice?
That was a lot less disturbing.
Well, those are 5 creepy
Chinese science experiments.
I’m sure we’ll all sleep well tonight.
And coming up after the break,
I sit down with Benedict Rogers
to talk about the future of political rights
in Hong Kong.
So what do you think about the top 5
creepy Chinese science experiments?
Leave your comments below.
Thanks for watching this episode of China Uncensored.
Once again I’m your host Chris Chappell,
see you next time.
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