(Clearwisdom.net) Have you ever heard of the term "political anesthesia"? Please allow me to explain, as it is not the same as mental anesthesia, nor is it physiological anesthesia or anything that happens outside of the operating room.
As the eldest grandson in my family, to meet my parents' expectations, I accompanied them to Indonesia for the first time in the spring of 2010 to pay respect at the graves of my grandparents, and to visit relatives.
In the Jasmine Cafe in Bandung, my father told me his experiences from a turbulent time 40 years ago. My father has never been good with words. This time it was as if he became another person. When he got worked up talking, his voice and expression were vivid and he sighed on and on. It was as if he was reliving the deep feelings from the past.
Both my parents were born in Indonesia. Heavily influenced by their teachers (communist party members), they moved back to China as teenagers in 1960, left their parents and siblings behind, full of passion and enthusiasm. They arrived in time for an unprecedented man-made famine that cost 40 million lives. They were hungry, tired and anxious. On top of that, there was enormous pressure from waves of political movements. My father became sick with serious gastric ulcers. To survive, even though he was only 30 years old, he had no choice but to have 3/4 of his stomach surgically removed.
This was during the Cultural Revolution. The doctors informed my father that on the day of his operation, to control the pain, they had to use what was then termed "political anesthesia," as opposed to the more common "general anesthesia" used in hospitals today. "Political anesthesia" meant using acupuncture to subdue the pain. This was done because during the Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao advocated a policy of combining the essence of eastern and western medicine. The use of acupuncture to replace pharmacological anesthesia was one of those projects. In the days when my father entered the hospital, surgical patients received either regular anesthesia or acupuncture according to the day of the week, regardless of the patient's conditions or the type of surgery. One or two days were designated each week by CCP officials in the hospital for implementing "acupuncture anesthesia." This was the origin of the term "political anesthesia."
According to the doctor, acupuncture had been successfully tested for pain control on open-chest lung surgery. One of the reasons is that there are very few nerve endings on the lungs, so there is little sensitivity to pain. But acupuncture had not been tested during surgery on the abdominal cavity. My father, a healthy young man, was among the first group selected as guinea pigs for the procedure. The doctor in charge carefully examined him, and repeatedly warned that the acupuncturist would insert the needles deeply since my father's abdominal muscles were thick and strong. My father's hands and feet, head and neck were all restrained with belts. His eyes were covered tightly. The doctor prepared a towel for my father to bite on to prevent him from harming his teeth and tongue in case the "political anesthesia" had no effect in reducing pain. I can't imagine what he felt like lying flat in the operating room this way. Fearful and nervous, certainly, but I feel these words hardly do justice to the situation.
Everyone will be able to guess the ending of the story below even if I do not say it.
I remember that when my father told me about these past events, it seemed that every single one of his grey hairs were quivering and crying out. My father is a man of iron. He suffered so bitterly yet never complained. Yet this "political anesthesia" far surpassed the limit of his endurance. My father simply said that he clearly felt all of the doctor's incisions. It was a heartrending pain like ripping open his lungs every time the position of his internal organs was changed. According to my father, the surgery felt endless. He said a formidable pain like an abyss swallowed him up, and then the doctor's next movement felt like a wave that grabbed him from the depths of the sea and threw him extremely high. Wave after wave of torment seemed to thoroughly wipe out all of his physical strength and vitality, and to destroy every ounce of his willpower. For six months after the surgery he was not able to sleep well. As soon as he shut his eyes he would be carried back to the terror of the operating table, to relive in his dreams the horror of being disemboweled while wide awake.
Of course the doctor anticipated that the experiment would completely fail, but party nature easily obliterates human nature. Throughout the entire operation my father didn't receive any help in the form of pain relief. We don't know the conclusion of their report, whether acupuncture anesthesia was considered another great success of "the wisdom and foresight of the great almighty leader" or not. I also don't know if other young people were forced to receive "political anesthesia" or if other fathers and mothers have told this kind of story to the next generation. This was definitely the first time I heard this story. I was not aware of it until 40 years had passed. What kind of fear would cause a family member to bury this story for such a long time? I felt I had an obligation to preserve it in print, to leave it for future generations, and to make sure that we don't forget it.
This has led me to tremble with fear regarding the recent accusations that CCP authorities instruct doctors to disembowel living Falun Gong practitioners without anesthesia. This is done to harvest their internal organs for profit, and is an atrocity that leads the helpless victims to die in terrible agony. My father's firsthand experience forces me to believe that this kind of evil, something unprecedented in history, is indeed taking place.
The arrogance and insanity of a dictator, seeing someone in mortal danger without trying to help; a medical system willing to forfeit its integrity when tempted by gains; and the corrupted morality of doctors: all of these elements combined allow such horrific crimes to take place. The CCP is truly nothing more than a band of gangsters who will do anything to keep their evil system from collapse.
July 30, 2010
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Category: Perspectives
