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Book Review of Larry's Kidney: (Being the Story of) How I Found Myself in China with My Black Sheep Cousin and His Mail-Order Bride, Skirting the Law to Get Him a Transplant--and Save His Life

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My husband and I have traveled to China 20 times, both for personal reasons and for business. As an artist, writer, designer, stamper, collagist and photographer, we first traveled there when I was asked to teach some groups classes about design, stamping and art. From that trip, we found China to be a wonderful source of art materials that I used and that we sold to many of our greeting card and art design customers. We became hooked on China and began both making trips there at least twice a year for ourselves and also forming a travel company to accompany groups of people to China.

We grew to love China and made many Chinese friends there. We loved most of the people, but we learned NOT to trust them. The things that were mentioned in the reviews on Amazon, the very acts described, I don't doubt were going on. That knowledge both frightened me and horrified me. One other thing - we are Jewish, and I personally lost HUNDREDS of family members in the Holocaust, including my great grandparents and other members of my close family other than my grandparents who thankfully got out of Hungary in time. The very same things that are being done to the Chinese citizens, the "political prisoners" who are guilty of nothing at all, other than being young and healthy, are much the same as the Jewish children and adults who were murdered in the Holocaust just for being Jewish.

I was just about to order this book. (I am immediately drawn to anything about China.) Then I began to think about things more carefully and remembered reading some "unavailable" material about young men and sometimes young women frequently being targets of false arrest so that they can (and DO) be put to death for use of their young organs such as kidneys, hearts, eyes, bones, etc. I almost threw up, thinking about what was being done.

We need people to speak up about these horrors. We need more people to think before they act and order a book of this type where the author delightedly writes about ignoring rules, regulations, "skirting the law" and causing harm to innocents for his benefit and the benefit of his family members. Obviously, I never did order the book and never will. I am a writer too, and I hope my writing makes people think as well.

Most sincerely,
Barbara Gregory-Pearlman
Las Vegas, NV