One law for all?
Published by Seelan Palay on Friday, April 3, 2009
By Darth Vader, Guest Columnist at wayangparty.com
March 22, 2009
Recently, prominent criminal defense attorney Subhash Anandan created a stir with his comment that “There’s one law for the rich, and one law for ordinary people.” Predictably, the authorities criticized his comments, with Law Minister K. Shanmugam declaring that “There is no truth in his comments.” He then cited a couple of cases where rich people were punished for their crimes. So is there any truth to Mr. Anandan’s remarks then? Or was he just making wild allegations out of sheer frustration at losing several cases? After all, he is well-known for his pro-bono work in representing defendants in some very high profile cases, including Took Leng How, the man who was eventually convicted and executed for the murder of 8 year old Huang Na. Perhaps an analysis of several prominent cases over the past few years would shed better light on this.
Organ Trading:
Recently, Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan announced that he would be pushing of the legalization of organ trading, specifically of kidneys. This was prompted by the arrest of Tang Wee Sung, Chairman of C. K. Tang, for attempting to buy a kidney, and for falsifying his affidavit. Mr. Tang had been undergoing dialysis for kidney failure for the past few years, and had recently been removed from the list of potential transplant recipients due to his age and poor health. In desperation, he sought to buy a kidney from an Indonesian peasant. Mr. Tang, his prospective donor, and the broker who arranged the sale were all arrested and jailed for their part in the crime.
Following Mr. Tang’s conviction, Mr. Khaw commented that that it was sad that Mr. Tang had been driven to resort to an illegal act like organ trading out of sheer desperation, and said that it made absolutely no sense that he should be denied a kidney and a fresh start in life. He added that in his (Mr. Khaw’s) opinion, this should not have been a crime since it would have resulted in a win-win situation for all parties involved: Mr. Tang would have his new lease on life, while the Indonesian farmer would have money to take care of his family. Mr. Khaw’s sympathy and understanding for Mr. Tang’s plight would have been most admirable, except for one thing; his was not the first case of a dying person attempting to get a new lease on life through organ trading. There had been another case several years earlier, and Mr. Khaw’s reaction back then had been very different.
In 2002, Ms. Selvarani Raja suffered liver failure as a result of taking Slim 10, a supposedly 100% all natural herbal remedy using traditional Chinese herbs for weight loss. In reality, it contained two lethal poisons, Fenfluramin, and N-Nitroso-Fenfluramin, or Fen-Fen for short. Ms. Raja’s condition deteriorated rapidly while she was in hospital and doctors told her family that her only chance at survival would be a liver transplant. Unfortunately for her, her closest living relatives all proved unsuitable for one reason or another. Unexpectedly though, her family did find a suitable donor, whom they claimed was a distant relative from India. A background check of the donor however showed that he was actually a construction worker working here and that the family had actually wanted to buy the liver from him. The family’s application for the transplant was rejected, and Ms. Raja died of liver failure as a result.
Following her death, Mr. Khaw said that the reason why the transplant could not be approved was because organ trading exploited the poor, and that there should be no place for it in Singapore. He also added that organ donations should be acts of compassion, not commerce. Now contrast what he said about organ trading back then with what he said about it following Tang Wee Sung’s arrest and conviction. In both instances, there was a dying person who needed a transplant, a donor who was willing to sell his organ and a family willing to pay for the sale. So why the change of heart? After all, if attempting to buy a liver from an Indian construction worker constitutes exploitation of the worker, then logically speaking wouldn’t attempting to buy a kidney from an Indonesian farmer also constitute exploiting the farmer? So what exactly is the difference between Tang Wee Sung’s case and Selvarani Raja’s then, that it should elicit sympathy and action to legalize organ trading from the Minister in the former and not in the latter? If anything, Ms. Raja had a much stronger case for it: Mr. Tang had kidney failure, and his life was being sustained through regular dialysis. On the other hand, there was nothing more that doctors could have done to save Ms Raja’s life except for a transplant, and that had been denied to her.
Still, all’s well that ends well, for Mr. Tang at least; he received a donated kidney from convicted murderer, Tan “One-eyed Tiger” Chor Jin, whose kidney was miraculously compatible to his. He can now look forward to a new lease in life. The same cannot be said of Selvarani Raja, whose life could have been saved had organ trading been legal back then. Kidney patients can at least have their lives prolonged through dialysis: with liver failure, being unable to receive a transplant meant certain death. It is ironic then that in announcing plans to legalize organ trading, Mr. Khaw declared that only kidney sales would be allowed; liver sales still remained banned. Was his decision due to the fact that Tang Wee Sung needed a kidney while Selvarani Raja needed a liver? The true answer will only be known should a wealthy person try to buy a liver some day.
Slim 10:
Selvarani Raja was not the only victim of Slim 10. Local actress and compere Andrea de Cruz was its first local victim. She became critically ill, and only an emergency liver transplant from her then-fiancé (and now husband), actor Pierre Png, had saved her life. Fortunately for her, she has since made a full recovery, even though she would still have to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of her life.
Following her discharge from hospital and subsequent recovery, she sued Slim 10’s importer Health Biz and its CEO Semon Liu for damages. Other defendants named in the suit were Slim 10 distributor TV Media and her fellow actor Rayson Tan, who had supplied her with the capsules. In his affidavit, Mr. Liu, the nephew of prominent local architect Liu Thai Ker, had declared that he was not aware that Slim 10 contained Fen-Fen, and that immediately following her admission to hospital in a coma, he had sent a sample to Australia for testing. According to his affidavit, he only knew that the pills contained Fen-Fen after the Australian chemist had warned him of it, and that was after he had received the import license. He also added that before importing the capsules, he sent them to the Health Science Authority (HSA) for testing, and the HSA had reported that the capsules were safe for human consumption. He naturally received a lot of sympathy from the public for this, at least initially. After all, caveat emptor (buyer beware), right? If Andrea de Cruz was so vain as to take slimming pills if she wasn’t sure if they were safe, then wasn’t it her own fault for not taking precautions in the first place? And besides, how could it possibly be Semon Liu’s fault if his business partners in mainland China had screwed him by adulterating the capsules with Fen-Fen without his knowledge? There were even people who called Ms. de Cruz a “vindictive bitch” for suing him instead of accepting responsibility for her own actions in taking the pills. At least, that was the case until the trial actually unfolded.
During the trial, the Australian chemist who analyzed the pills unleashed a bombshell revelation: Semon Liu had asked him to test Slim 10 before he received the import permit from the HSA, and not after Ms. de Cruz became ill as he originally declared in his affidavit. The chemist had also warned him that Slim 10 contained Fen-Fen, a lethal poison, and that under no circumstances should it ever be allowed for human consumption, even before he had sent his samples to the HSA for testing. In other words, Semon Liu knew that Slim 10 was a lethal poison even before he submitted his samples to the HSA for approval. But did that stop him from going ahead to import Slim 10? No, not when there’s big money to be made from its sale, obviously.
The chemist also testified that he prepared a report for Semon Liu to submit to the HSA. In it, he warned the HSA’s analytical chemists that Slim 10 contained Fen-Fen, and that under no circumstances should it ever be approved for sale. Under cross-examination from Ms. de Cruz’s attorneys, Mr. Liu admitted that he told the HSA that Slim 10 was a 100% natural herbal capsule made from herbs used for weight loss in traditional Chinese medicine. When queried about the Australian chemist’s report, he said that he told the HSA that it was the test result from Australia, without notifying them of the report’s true contents. Or in other words, he had confessed that he had suppressed the fact that the report was actually a warning to the HSA not to legalize Slim 10.
Under cross-examination from Mr. Liu’s attorneys, the two HSA analytical chemists that tested the pills admitted that they had never read the Australian chemist’s report; in fact, they had never even unsealed it, let alone opened and read it. They added that they had taken Mr. Liu’s word that Slim 10 was a 100% natural herbal capsule made from herbs used for weight loss in traditional Chinese medicine, and they had only tested for mercury and arsenic as is required by law for the testing of traditional Chinese herbs because of it. In short, Mr. Liu had lied to the two chemists about the true nature of Slim 10, and they had bought into his lies. And one woman died, and another very nearly lost her life because of it.