There is a scene in the 1985 Dan Aykroyd / Chevy Chase movie Spies Like Us where the two main characters who are most definitely not medical doctors find themselves in a at a medical camp in Afghanistan. The legendary Bob Hope shows up in a cameo and says “Doctor. Doctor. Glad I’m not sick.”
It was an absurd scene in an absurd movie.
The video at the beginning of this article is equally absurd and riddled with numerous mistakes that any medical professional would question.
Russia’s latest propaganda push has to do with allegations that Ukraine is harvesting organs from dead or dying soldiers. In order to understand the context of the video, we first need to explore the psychology behind organ donation in Russia.
To start, most Russians are Orthodox Christians.
The Russian Orthodox church rejects cremation and believes that on the second coming of Christ, the faithful will be resurrected in their physical bodies. The Russian Orthodox Church has no official policy on organ donation. However, Russian culture and folklore view organ donation as distasteful and contrary to their religious views.
Social taboos and lack of a national computerized organ donor database lead to a major problem as Russia emerged from its communist past in 1992. Russia had one of the lowest rates of organ donations in the world
To rectify this, a law was passed in 1992 titled “On The Transplantation Of Organs And (Or) Tissues.” This law created an “Presumption of Consent” system where deceased individuals are presumed to be organ donors unless they have indicated their refusal to donate.
The idea was that presumed consent would increase the organ donation pool and save lives. 1
And then the horror stories began.
