Swoop Film producer, Kay Rubacek, was interviewed by the Epoch Times about attending the annual meeting of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities to present Hard To Believe and how the information presented in the film was received by the attendees.
Here's the report from the Houston print edition of the Epoch Times newspaper.
(Image: photograph of the Epoch Times newspaper reporting the interview)
~ The Report Begins ~
The unethical use of organs for transplant from prisoners in China was a topic of discussion at the recent annual meeting of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities in Houston, Texas. Over one thousand professionals in the field of bioethics and related humanities attended the meeting and exhibition booths.
One unexpected booth among the rows of exhibiting colleges and journal publishers was the documentary film "Hard To Believe." It was released this year by New York-based film company Swoop Films, and focuses on state-sanctioned and mass killing of prisoners of conscience for their organs in China. The film asks why so little has been done in America to investigate and stop the crime.
Kay Rubacek, producer at Swoop Films, attended the event, which she said was an opportunity to meet face-to-face with professionals in the bioethics field, a group particularly relevant to the topic.
"Many ethicists have heard of the issue before but were unaware that an investigation via a documentary film had been done. They applauded our effort to bring this issue to light through this popular medium, and in a format that they can use in their college classrooms," Rubacek said.
The interviews in the documentary go beyond simply presenting the evidence of the crime, and ask American media, politicians, and the international medical community why so little has been done to stop the crime. The answer seems to lie in the very title of the film; that the killing of innocent people for their organs is, well, 'hard to believe'.
Rubacek says that independent investigators have found that the majority of these organs are coming not only from prisoners of conscience, but particularly from practitioners of Falun Gong, a traditional Chinese spiritual discipline which is persecuted in China. "This is particularly abhorrent, and ethicists immediately understand that," Rubacek said.
But not all ethicists are rushing to use the film in their classrooms for fear of losing funding or ties with the Chinese regime. "One college said that they have many Chinese students and ties with China and they are afraid that if they broadcast a film that criticizes China in any way they will lose out,” Rubacek says.
“Yet the majority of college teachers I've talked with have told me how important this material is for their classrooms to generate open-minded discussion, not criticism, and that as ethicists they shouldn't be afraid to discuss these issues.”
~ The End ~