6 | New Scientist | 22 June 2019EXECUTED prisoners are still
being used as organ donors in
China, according to an inquiry
set up by a campaign group.
The Chinese government
previously said it had stopped
this practice four years ago.
But this week, the chair of the
tribunal, Geoffrey Nice, said he
believes it is still widespread.
The inquiry in London was
initiated by campaign group the
International Coalition to End
Transplant Abuse in China and
has no legal power. It was asked
to investigate whether somehospitals in China are still
boosting supplies of transplant
organs from prisoners, and
whether these include political
prisoners and members of ethnic
groups, such as Uighur Muslims
and followers of Falun Gong, a
belief system banned in China.
The tribunal heard evidence
that some hospitals in China
offer organ transplants with very
short waiting times. This would be
impossible without a large bank
of people with known tissue types
who can be killed to order, said
Nice, a former UK judge.
The tribunal was told of a 2018
probe by the World Organization
to Investigate the Persecution
of Falun Gong. Researchers
pretending to be doctors rang
up senior transplant doctors in
Chinese hospitals to try to book
transplants. Some were offered
waits as short as one or two weeks.
In nine of the 12 hospitals,
doctors verbally confirmed thatthe organs would be sourced from
Falun Gong members.
Some websites advertise in
English for foreign patients to visit
Chinese hospitals for transplants,
says David Matas, a Canadian
human rights lawyer. Selling
organs to foreigners is against an
international convention known
as the Declaration of Istanbul.
People who had been released
from detainment camps in China
testified at the inquiry. Some said
they had been forced to have
medical checks of their internal
organs, such as ultrasound scans.
However, all this evidence is
circumstantial, and no one has
directly observed or proved that
transplant organs are still being
sourced from prisoners.
There have been claims for
decades that prisoners were being
used as organ donors in China.
Several thousand transplants
were reported in the country every
year, yet until recently there was
little public understanding of the
concept of brain death, says Jacob
Lavee, an Israeli heart surgeon
who is a member of campaign
group Doctors Against ForcedOrgan Harvesting. In other
countries, almost all transplants
come from people who end up
brain dead, but this accounts for
less than 1 per cent of all deaths,
which is why organs are such a
scarce commodity.
In about 2010, medical staff in
China began to be trained in how
to recognise brain death. Around
this time, public campaigns to get
people to register as voluntary
organ donors began, and the
Chinese government said organs
stopped being taken from
prisoners in 2015.
But earlier this year, Lavee and
two colleagues posted a study
online suggesting that there
are anomalies in China’s own
transplant figures. For example,
they said that, during a period in
2016, there were 640 transplantsreported, yet only 30 recorded
voluntary donors. This would
mean that each donor yielded a
medically impossible average of
more than 21 organs. In the UK,
the average figure is about three.
“The Chinese government
always follows the World Health
Organization’s guiding principles
on human organ transplants, and
has strengthened its management
on organ transplants in recent
years,” a spokesperson from the
Chinese Embassy in London said
in a statement. “We hope the
British people will not be misled
by rumours.”Persecution of minorities
Patrick Poon of Amnesty
International says that his
organisation has been unable to
confirm if executed prisoners are
still a source of organs in China.
“We do know that political
prisoners in China are subjected
to horrific abuses, and we are
particularly concerned about
the internment of up to a million
Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic
minorities,” says Poon.
However, Nice’s China Tribunal
found this week that there isn’t
enough evidence to determine
whether organs are being taken
from Uighur people interned in
“re-education camps”.
But the inquiry said there was
enough evidence to conclude
that forced organ harvesting has
occurred for years in China, and
that “Falun Gong practitioners
have been one – and probably the
main – source of organ supply”.
Adnan Sharif, a British kidney
surgeon who is another member
of Doctors Against Forced Organ
Harvesting, says transplant
doctors from other countries
should refuse to collaborate with
their Chinese colleagues until
the unethical practices stop. ❚“We know that political
prisoners in China
are subjected to
horrific abuses”
News
HUANG^ XIN/XINHUA/EYE
VINEMost organs worldwide
are donated by people
classed as brain deadChina inquiryClare WilsonForced organ transplants
Inquiry suggests prisoners are still being used as organ donors in China
The Falun
Gong belief
system
is banned
in ChinaLU
CY
NI
CHOL
SON/REU
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