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Promoting Ethics in Medicine

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Letter from the Editor, Ann F. Corson MD

A few days ago, Health Europa published an article about a new report from the Institute to Research the Crimes of Communism (IRCC), a non-profit organization based in the Czech Republic. An English version of the report, “The Economics of Organ Harvesting in China: The Part of Companies and Doctors in Democratic Countries in the Illegal Organ Harvesting in China” was published on December 9th.

The authors, Pavel Porubiak and Lukas Kudlacek, describe the forced live organ harvesting of prisoners in China as “one of the most inhumane crimes in the entire history of humanity” and say the “practice of illegal organ harvesting is equivalent to contract killing.”

The purpose of the report was to determine “whether, knowingly or unknowingly, companies or doctors (individuals) from democratic countries outside of China are participating in these unlawful acts.” Additionally, the authors ask whether those who knowingly or unknowingly collaborate and/or profit from China’s illegal and immoral actions are to be held criminally liable.

They point out that “the demand side of this crime is no less despicable than the source of the supply.” In other words, those transplant patients who travel to China for organs, those companies that supply China with medication and medical equipment related to transplantation, and medical organizations that collaborate in transplant training and research with China, whether ignorant or not of China's transplant practices, risk being considered culpable.

The authors deplore the “seeming global passivity of professional institutions – in comparison with the severity of the issue – and the restraint of the doctors…” as they conclude, “The evidence in this report reveals that the illegal organ harvesting in China is not a criminal offense limited to just that one country, but inevitably depends on many factors outside of China.”

Evidence indicates that “20 countries and regions in the world, at the very least, send transplant tourists to China for organ transplants” and that there are up to 28 companies that benefit financially from providing China with the “materials, drugs and devices supporting the development of the transplantation business.”

As the holiday season approaches with hopes for a better New Year, the DAFOH newsletter team asks all nations in the world to mandate and further strengthen upright moral and ethical practices, particularly in transplant medicine.

Given the vast accumulation of evidence documenting China’s illegal organ harvesting from Christians, Uyghurs, Tibetans and Falun Gong, we at DAFOH truly hope that all of those even remotely involved in China’s transplant industry will act quickly to extricate themselves in order to avoid complicity in “one of the most inhumane crimes in the entire history of humanity.”

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DAFOH Receives Mother Teresa Memorial Award for Social Justice

In late October, the Harmony Foundation announced that DAFOH, as well as three other associations and eight individuals were selected as recipients of the 2019 Mother Teresa Memorial Award for Social Justice.  This year, the annual award celebrating the legacy of Saint Mother Teresa was awarded to those fighting modern forms of slaveryPrevious award recipients have included presidents, parliamentarians, human rights activists, Medicines Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders) and the Dalai Lama.

The Foundation praised DAFOH’s mission to uphold ethical practices in medicine during its decade-long fight to inform the medical community and raise awareness in society at large of the state-sanctioned forced live organ harvesting of Chinese prisoners of conscience, including Falun Gong practitioners, House Christians, Tibetans, Uyghurs and political activists.

Founder and Chairman Dr. Abraham Mathai praised DAFOH’s petition to the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights as both noteworthy and admirable. The petition, which gathered over 3 million signatures from over 50 countries and regions, called for an end to China’s forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. Mathai also referenced the October 2018 report given by DAFOH member Dr. Harold King at the 3rd UK Round Table Briefing of Forced Organ Harvesting at Westminster Parliament, calling it a spine-chilling account of a new form of cold genocide.

In addition to the 2019 Mother Teresa Award, DAFOH received nominations for both the 2016 and 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.

Dr. Torsten Trey, DAFOH’s Executive Director, spoke at the Harmony International Conference on “Combating Contemporary Forms of Slavery” on November 3rd in Mumbai, India saying that those attending the conference in Mumbai and people around the world should raise their voices against the forced organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience in China. “It should concern you as a citizen of the world. These are crimes against humanity. If we just sit and watch it happen, saying it’s not occurring in my country, we are being complicit in these crimes. We need a shift in our thinking. We should discuss it and create awareness to bring about a change.”

Dr. Trey added, “The international medical community should reject any medical research knowledge about transplant medicine that comes from China as it is most likely acquired unethically by removing organs from thousands of prisoners forcibly. Ethical standards must not be watered down.”

“This is the killing of prisoners of conscience under the sponsorship of the state.” Unethically procured organs sold for profit under the eyes of the state is a “ practice that must not be tolerated by the international medical community,” he said.

The majority of prisoners of conscience subjected to forced organ harvesting are Falun Gong practitioners. Adherents of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which began in 1992, align their actions by the universal principles of Truth, Compassion and Forbearance. They have suffered more than twenty years from an unprecedented persecution, including brainwashing, torture deaths, and forced organ harvesting, at the hand of the Chinese Communist Party.  Dr. Trey told The Epoch Times, “Supporting Falun Gong and speaking up for the practice in public would reverse the purpose to silence and eradicate the practice.”

The China Tribunal published its judgment on June 17, 2019 after one year of deliberations, stating, “The Tribunal’s members are certain – unanimously, and sure beyond reasonable doubt – that in China forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been practiced for a substantial period of time involving a very substantial number of victims.”

newly published analysis suggests that organ donation numbers from China have been falsified and manufactured, and that transplant organs are not sourced from its public organ donation program but from a different, undisclosed source.

Dr. Trey urged all to help shine light on these crimes against humanity. He pointed out that one way the Chinese regime perpetuates forced organ harvesting is with its campaign to silence and eradicate the practice of Falun Gong.  He added that just by “sending a simple souvenir postcard to the Chinese President with the words: ‘Falun Gong is good. Stop forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners.’, the slow and occult eradication of Falun Gong, the characteristic of a cold genocide, would be defeated.”

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New Research Indicates China is Manipulating Data for its Voluntary Donation System

The purpose of a groundbreaking analysis published in BMC Medical Ethics on November 14th was to determine whether the Chinese government has in fact fulfilled its promises to reform the nation’s organ donation system.

Instead, the analysis suggests that the Chinese government has been using human-directed data manufacturing and manipulation to inflate its claimed voluntary organ donation numbers. The authors, Matthew Robertson, a doctoral student at the Australian National University (ANU), Raymond Hinde, a statistician from Australia and Jacob Lavee, MD, professor of cardiovascular transplant surgery at Tel Aviv University, used forensic statistical methods to examine three key datasets from 2010-2018 and found “unusual and anomalous features.”

Robertson and his colleagues derived data from the government’s voluntary donation program, including published information from the China Organ Transplant Response System (COTRS) and the Chinese Central Red Cross. The data was mathematically analyzed to determine whether the COTRS and Central Red Cross datasets had internal integrity and consistency, and then compared to one another for congruence. In addition, five provinces were examined with provincial Red Cross data for internal integrity and then compared to reported transplant activity at hospitals in the respective province for congruence. The researchers also compared the figures with data from 50 other countries in the Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation, a database managed by a collaboration between the World Health Organization and the Spanish Transplant Organization.

COTRS is a national computerized organ allocation and registration infrastructure that forms the basis of China’s voluntary organ donation system. Every organ donation is meant to be allocated solely through COTRS. The Red Cross Society of China is required to verify and witness every organ donation. COTRS was created in response to international calls for China to reform its unethical transplantation system, which government officials acknowledged was heavily dependent on executed prisoners for organs. However, studies over the last 13 years into China’s transplantation infrastructure, including a 2016 investigation and a 2019 People’s Tribunal, have revealed that China has been sourcing organs not just from executed prisoners, but primarily from living prisoners of conscience, including the Falun Gong, Tibetans, House Christians and Uyghurs, to supply a vast organ transplantation system that is larger than any other country outside of the United States. The on-demand nature for transplants in China, with short wait times of approximately two weeks, can be explained by forced organ harvesting of readily accessible living prisoners of conscience.

In addition to the creation of COTRS, Robertson et al. note that China set in motion several other key changes to comply with international ethical standards, including revising what had been a vague definition of diagnostic criteria for both circulatory and neurological death, establishing a network of hospital-based organ procurement organizations (OPOs), and the implementation of transplant coordinators affiliated with both local hospitals and branches of the Red Cross Society of China. The government is also purported to have implemented a policy of “humanitarian aid” for families of deceased donors.

The authors found that the COTRS data conformed almost precisely to a mathematical formula, a one-parameter quadratic that is familiar to most high school students, with the Central Red Cross data mirroring the former. The data, the researchers observed, showed a steady upward swing when plotted on a chart and matches the equation so precisely, with 99.7 percent variation, that suggests it was manufactured. The researchers found that total donors in China, as well as the number of available kidneys and livers “comply almost perfectly” to three separate quadratic equations. “The quadratic formula expresses a relationship between three known quantities – A, B, and C – and an unknown quantity, X. It is most often written as AX2 + BX + C = 0."

The researchers also found outliers in China's Red Cross dataset, including a medically impossible 21.3 number of transplants per donor over a 10-day period in March 2016, data inputs that matched an apparent pattern of "correction" for a consistent rate of 2.75 transplants per donor, and other changes suggesting manipulation. Robertson et al. stated that the COTRS data was "falsified through a top-down process," and the Red Cross data was manipulated to match and "maintain a semblance of congruence." The data appeared to have been "handed down as quotas - albeit quotas that were imperfectly implemented across a fractured bureaucratic and administrative apparatus, thus exposing the discrepancies identified.”

Asked why Chinese officials would be so careless in publishing these kinds of numbers, Robertson et al. stated that it was very difficult to falsify an entire data series with "some semblance of internal coherence among competing bureaucracies", and it seemed China had made a mistake. "If they had added 10 percent more random variation we wouldn't have such strong findings," he said. "The fact that it was so clean is simply a mistake. It's a monumental error on their part.”

The study’s results were reviewed by a well-respected statistician in Britain, Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge, who concurred with the findings. While there are almost always recording errors and delays in government data, the anomalies found by Robertson et al., he said, "follow a systematic and surprising pattern… The close agreement of the numbers of donors and transplants with a quadratic function is remarkable, and is in sharp contrast to other countries... This could, of course, just be coincidence, although it is difficult to quantify how surprising such a pattern is without a model for the "natural" development of a transplant program. But I cannot think of any good reason for such a quadratic trend arising naturally."

The authors wrote in their conclusion that “one of the most troubling consequences of the apparent data falsification and apparent continued use of nonvoluntary organs in the official allocation mechanisms is that it impugns the reputations of Chinese surgeons dedicated to the highest standards in ethical transplant medicine, and undermines their efforts at establishing a trustworthy, transparent, and ethical system.”

The BMC Medical Ethics paper was widely reported by media around the world including The Guardian, The Epoch Times, The Sidney Morning Herald, The Japan Times, Health Europa, Medical News and the Daily Wire

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Senator, Ethicist, Physician, and Political Writer Demand Action from Australian Government

China’s forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience made headlines in Australia, with some calling for closer scrutiny of relationships between hospitals and physicians in Australia and those in China.

RN Breakfast hosted a week of conversations on forced organ harvesting, citing evidence that “China illegally harvests up to 100,000 organs from prisoners of conscience every year.”

Some physicians and hospitals who collaborated with China in the past have since severed ties due to concerns over unethical transplant practices. Recently, questions have again surfaced about relationships between Australian hospitals and Chinese transplant researchers.

Speaking with RN Breakfast, leading Australian medical ethicist and Professor Wendy Rogers of Macquarie University stated that, “Until China provides evidence that it is no longer murdering prisoners of conscience for their organs, we shouldn’t have anything to do with anything remotely connected with transplantation in China.”  Rogers believes that forced organ harvesting is still taking place despite China’s denials.

Eric Abetz, Tasmanian Senator and Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, also gave his views on forced organ harvesting to RN Breakfast, referencing the recent findings of the China Tribunal which he believes to be “true and correct” and are a call to action. “The Australian government and the international community need to take a very strong stand and tell the Chinese authorities that what they are undertaking is illegal, it’s barbaric, it’s a breach of every fundamental human right that you can think of.”

It has been estimated that forced organ harvesting in China is a multi-billion-dollar industry. The organ brokerage trade has emerged alongside the monumental growth of the organ transplant industry in China. The fact that recipients are able to schedule a transplant in advance is not only cause for concern, but flies in the face of China’s claim that it is not forcibly harvesting organs.

Professor Maria Fiatarone Singh, a physician at the University of Sydney, and member of Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, recently spoke with The Sydney Morning Herald. “Booking in a transplant, whether it be through a hospital or a broker, is impossible in a normal, voluntary organ donor system,” she said. “There is only one way you can do this, and that is where you have an organ bank – a large group of people who are being held in detention and killed on demand.”

The Sydney Morning Herald article provides a detailed history and demonstrates a clear understanding of China’s organ harvesting crimes against humanity.

It is heartening to note that some countries have taken a strong stance against these crimes. The Herald reported, “Dr Jacob Lavee, director of the Heart Transplantation Unit at the Sheba Medical Centre, in Israel, spearheaded the Israeli Organ Transplant Law in 2008, blocking outgoing transplant patients to China.”  Other countries are also concerned with what is going on in China and are passing legislation aimed at ending these horrific crimes.

But more still needs to be done.  The world cannot stand by while these atrocities continue.  Twenty years is twenty years too long.

Writer and publisher David Llewellyn-Smith recently wrote an article asking this question: Ever wonder if you would have fought the rise of Nazism?  It certainly makes one take pause.

He poses this question in relation to the recent takeover by China of the Australian state-owned milk producer Bellamy, and calls this action an effort on the part of the Australian government to “kowtow its way back into CCP favor.”  He notes that China has since used its influence in Australia to control any questioning of its actions.  The Chinese embassy issued a statement to which Llewellyn-Smith opined, “[are] we’re not allowed to discuss the CCP in our own country if that is challenging Chinese sovereignty?”

Llewellyn-Smith goes on to quote articles on forced organ harvesting published in both the New York Times and Forbes, and questions why his government is trying to crawl into the good graces of a country committing such atrocities.

He ends by saying “If you’ve ever wondered if you would have fought the rise of Nazism, now you know.”

That’s a powerful statement.

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Fox News Covers Chinese Organ Harvesting Issues

Major American media outlet Fox News exposed China’s illicit transplant industry in a recent article exploring the historical context of the persecution of Falun Gong. The article, written by Hollie McKay, tells the stories of several Chinese nationals who were detained in labor camps and medically tested in preparation for organ harvesting and of family members of those whose organs were believed to have been harvested.

The article also outlines the conclusions of the recent Peoples Tribunal in London sponsored by the International Coalition to End Organ Transplant Abuse In China. The tribunal highlighted evidence of China’s transplant abuses, including incredibly short waiting times for organs and websites advertising organs on demand, and determined that China’s illegal and unethical organ procurement practices are ongoing and that there is no evidence that the infrastructure that facilitates this transplant system has been dismantled.

Other investigating organizations such as The Heritage Foundation and China Organ Harvest Research Center are cited as well.

The article takes readers into the life of Jennifer Zeng who spent time in prison in 2000 for practicing Falun Gong. Jennifer’s life may have been saved because she was a carrier of Hepatitis C which may have precluded her selection for organ harvesting.

The article then introduces Han Yu, whose father was kidnapped and detained. She was told he had died. When the family went to identify the body in the morgue, they discovered that he had severe bruising and stitches running from his throat down underneath his clothing. When the family attempted to investigate the wound further, they were forcefully removed from the morgue. Yu suspected that her father’s organs had been removed without consent, which resulted in his death.

Jiang Li, experienced a similar incident in 2009. She was called to identify her father’s remains after he had been imprisoned for his spiritual belief and practice of Falun Gong. When she arrived at the morgue, his body was still warm, indicating that he was not dead. After this discovery, Li and her family were forcefully removed from the morgue. Later, they were given his cremated remains with no explanation as to the cause of his death.

The article also tells of incarcerated people who, despite being subjected to harsh treatment and torture, were being evaluated by ultrasound, x rays and blood tests consistent with medical assessment of the quality of their retail organs.

Finally, the article delves into the recent mass internment of Uighurs in the Xinjiang autonomous region of China.  It is presumed that this ethnic minority group is also being used as part of the involuntary national organ bank for both state-run and for-profit hospitals throughout China.

The Fox News article was sited in several news publications including The American Thinker, The Express, The New American, and The BL.

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United Kingdom House of Lords Taking Steps to Combat Organ Trafficking

In the United Kingdom, Lord Hunt, a member of the House of Lords, is taking steps to hold UK citizens responsible for organ trafficking crimes committed while traveling outside of the country. In countries such as Belgium, Norway, Italy, Taiwan, Spain, and Israel, similar legislation has already been instituted.

The bill, introduced by Lord Hunt on October 23rd, is an amendment of Section 32 of the Human Tissue Act of 2004 which prohibits commercial dealings in human material for transplantation. The new amendments would require signed consent from the organ donor and prohibit the purchasing of organs. Those found guilty of violating the proposed law would face punishments ranging from 12 months to 9 years in prison.

At present, Lord Hunt’s amendment is making its way through the British Parliamentary system.

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Co-Author of “An Update: Bloody Harvest/The Slaughter” Speaks About China’s Transplantation Abuse

On October 21, the University of VA (UVA) School of Law held its first Human Rights week and included the topic of China’s forced organ harvesting practices. David Matas, co-author of "An Update: Bloody Harvest/The Slaughter," and UVA medical school professor Dr. Joshua Li spoke about China’s ongoing killing of innocents through organ transplantation. Matas described his experience investigating the transplant programs of hundreds of hospitals in China to determine the ongoing existence and extent of China’s forced organ harvesting practices. Dr. Li concluded the presentation discussing subjugated minority groups in China who are the primary targets of organ harvesting, including Falun Gong, the largest persecuted group.

Matas also spoke at the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on October 27 about what can legally be done to stop China’s transplantation crimes. Matas detailed how various international treaties and legislation created in the U.S., such as the 2019 H.R.2121 ‑ STOP Organ Trafficking Act and the U.S. Global Magnitsky Act of 2016 could be useful in penalizing officials involved in forced organ harvesting.

Matas noted that while there are relevant legal instruments found around the globe which may be impactful in addressing China’s transplantation crimes, there are too many loopholes in these pieces of legislation so that the perpetrators have effective immunity. He declared, "That still needs to change."

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China’s Organ Harvesting Exposed by New Netflix Film: The Laundromat

The Laundromat, a recently released Netflix film directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, Antonio Banderas, and Matthias Schoenaerts, primarily exposes the illegal and unethical activities revealed by the "Panama Papers".

The third story in the film takes a turn to the East to depict the persecution of the spiritual movement Falun Gong and details of the Chinese government’s forced live organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners of conscience.

The movie depicts a last meeting between Gu Kailai, wife of Bo Xilai, then Governor of Liaoning Provincial and Communist Party Chief of Chongqing and Dalian City, and British businessman Neil Heywood, renamed Maywood in the film. In the scene, Gu and Maywood have a business dispute after which she speaks of the Wang Lijun incident that led to her husband’s downfall.

Then, in an apparent attempt to frighten Maywood, Gu tells him of their involvement in the organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners. He rushes off to the bathroom to vomit in disgust at her revelations. On his return she hands him poisoned water. He dies shortly thereafter. Gu and her aide attempt to arrange the scene to look like an accidental alcohol overdose.

Subsequent scenes in the film show Bo Xilai’s corruption trial as well as Gu Kailai’s murder conviction for the poisoning their longtime British business partner.

Here is what we know of the real-life story:

In 2012, Bo Xilai was expected to rise to the Politburo Standing Committee after having built a career promoting retro-Maoist culture and vigorously following Jiang Zemin’s directives to persecute and eradicate Falun Gong.

Bo greatly expanded the prisons and labor camps in Dalian City and Liaoning Province, filling them with illegally detained Falun Gong practitioners. Investigative reporter, Ethan Gutmann, has called Liaoning province the epicenter of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners during Bo’s tenure as governor there. Bo also personally approved the building of Gunther von Hagens’ plastination factory in Dalian.

It has been speculated that Bo, Gu and/or Heywood were profiting by monetizing the organs of incarcerated Falun Gong practitioners, aiding the boom in China’s lucrative transplantation industry, and by selling the corpses of Falun Gong practitioners persecuted to death to the newly built plastination factories.

Bo’s political aspirations ended abruptly after his top lieutenant and Chongqing police chief, Wang Lijun, sought, but was denied, asylum at the American consulate in Chengdu on February 6, 2012.

After a conflict with his longtime boss, Wang fled for asylum to the U.S. Consulate, supposedly to offer information about Bo and Gu’s involvement in Heywood’s murder. After leaving the Consulate, reportedly of his own free will, Wang was taken into custody by state security officials from Beijing. While local media in Chongqing later announced that he was on a mental health-related sick leave, the U.S. Department of State officials never commented on the meeting with Wang.

On 14 November 2011, Heywood was found dead in his Chongqing hotel room. Several months later, his death was ruled a homicide in which both Gu and Bo were implicated.

In August 2012, Gu Kailai was convicted of lethally poisoning Heywood and received a suspended death sentence (life in prison).

In September 2012, Wang Lijun was sentenced to fifteen years in prison after being convicted on charges of abuse of power, bribery, and defection.

In August 2013, Bo Xilai was sentenced to life in prison for bribery, abuse of power and corruption.

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News in Review

Czech Politicians Demand Action Against Organ Harvesting in China

On November 28th, five political parties called for open parliamentary discussion on a draft resolution condemning gross human rights violations in China, particularly the decades-long persecution of the spiritual discipline Falun Gong as well as other religious and ethnic groups. Czech lawmakers are also discussing an amendment to the Transplant Act intended to address organ transplant surgery practices in China.


Canadian Senators Set in Motion Actions to Combat China’s Human Rights Abuses

On Dec. 10th, Canadian Senator Salma Ataullahjan re-introduced her bill to combat international organ trafficking that had been tabled during the last Parliament session. Additionally, Senators Thanh Hai Ngo and Leo Housakos initiated a Senate motion urging the government to use the Magnitsky law to sanction Chinese officials involved in human rights abuses.


Former Canadian Parliamentarian David Kilgour demands Canada and the world take action

The recently leaked “Xinjiang Papers” tell of the Chinese regime’s newly built re-education camps for the Muslim minority similar to those previously established for Falun Gong. Since 2017, every Uyghur in Xinjiang had been blood and DNA tested. The first of nine crematoria was completed in early 2018. Regional airports have fast-track lanes to expedite the transport of human organs. All this engenders fears of another genocide in the making.

 

France must take steps to prevent collusion in forced organ harvesting

An article published in the French Liberation newspaper called on France, as the initiator of International Declaration of Human Rights, to make additions to the country’s bioethics law to protect against collusion in forced organ harvesting. The proposed addition would include the tracing of organ sources for every transplant. DAFOH member Alexis Genin, a neurologist at Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, pointed out that French medical institutions are training Chinese surgeons who go on to commit organ harvesting crimes in China.


Forced organ harvesting a topic at ESOT Congress in Denmark

The issue of forced organ harvesting in China received wide attention at the 9th European Society for Organ Transplantation Congress held in Copenhagen, Denmark. A China Organ Harvest Research Center report was selected to be part of the digital exhibition and its presentation “Organ Transplant Abuse in China (2): Unethical Procurement Continues Despite Claims of Reform” was selected for the Elevator Pitch summary. Also selected for the summary was a presentation by DAFOH Member Huige Li, of the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz Medical Center, entitled “Abuse of Brain Death Definition in Organ Procurement in China.” Human rights attorney David Matas gave a presentation on “Mandatory Reporting of Transplant Tourism.”


VIDEO: Swedish foundation hosts doctor who witnessed forced organ harvesting

The Edelstam Foundation, named for a Swedish diplomat who helped hundreds of Jewish people escape from Nazi Germany, hosted a seminar that included Dr. Enver Tohti Bughda, who gave a first-hand account of forced organ harvesting in China. The Foundation’s Co-Founder and President said, “What is happening is there is clearly a genocide going on in China…And organ harvesting is one of the methods in the genocide. And this is becoming alarming.”


Pompeo likens China’s authoritarianism to that of former East Germany

On the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo likened the actions of the Chinese Communist Party to those of former East Germany. According to Pompeo, the Trump administration’s response has included visa restrictions on some current perpetrators of human rights abuses in China and stopping “American companies from exporting certain products to Chinese tech companies that are enabling these very human rights abuses.”


World leaders should “make it known to China that these abuses will not be tolerated.”

In a thorough overview of China’s organ harvesting abuses, the Cincinnati Republic explains how the transplant industry in China, despite having one of the lowest donation rates worldwide, has grown tremendously in the past two decades by using prisoners as an organ bank. “World leaders have acknowledged the atrocities committed by the Chinese government but have yet to do anything to stop it from happening.”


Editorial shines a spotlight on China’s organ harvesting crimes

In a comprehensive editorial, the editors of Hamodia provide an overview of China’s forced organ harvesting calling it a form of “barbarism.” The authors conclude that U.S. “dealings with China may afford some leverage in effectively communicating to its leaders the outrage that life-affirming and rights-respecting societies feel over the issue of forced organ procurement. If so, the leverage should be utilized.”


American Public Health Association annual meeting exposes forced organ harvesting
At the 147th Annual Meeting and Expo of the American Public Health Association the China Organ Harvest Research Center gave oral and poster presentations on their findings as well as special presentations on the “nature, scale, organ source, driving factors, and impact of China's forced organ harvesting.”


Collusion with China’s organ harvesting atrocities

A reader response to The Epoch Times’ article “Organ Harvesting” expresses disbelief that companies in business with China can turn a blind eye to the genocide of forced organ harvesting. The reader asks, “What level of graceful contract language relieves anyone trading with China of the culpability of enabling a regime that, now casually, murders and maims human beings as an economic policy?”


Vogue supermodel raises awareness about forced organ harvesting in China

In her acceptance speech for the Young Achiever of the Year Award at Vogue Women of the Year 2019, supermodel Pooja Mor spoke about the genocide of Falun Gong practitioners in China. “I can’t sit and watch millions of innocent people being wrongfully persecuted and their organs being taken without consent and without anesthesia. I have to stand up for it—it’s my cause, and that is, to me, being a voice for the voiceless.”


Falun Gong practitioner interviewed about the practice and the persecution

This interview with journalist Marie-Paul Baxiu provides insight into the practice of Falun Gong and the origins of the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution campaign which includes psychiatric abuse, physical torture and forced organ harvesting.


Hollywood bows to Chinese censors

Movies like Iron Man 3, and Abominable, the upcoming Top Gun sequel, have altered their content to suit the Chinese government and Chinese business interests. A recent South Park episode parodies this issue, which is well known in Hollywood, and points to the organ transplant industry as one of the taboo topics. When a character in the HBO series mentions a liver transplant, the director breaks in to say “Cut! Cut! Listen guys, we just got word from the Chinese censors. They don’t want us mentioning organ transplants.”



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Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) aims to provide the medical community and society with objective findings of unethical and illegal organ harvesting. Organ harvesting, the removal of organs from a donor, without free and voluntary consent, is considered a crime against humanity, as well as a threat to the integrity of medical science in general. This edition of our newsletter offers up-to-date information on international efforts to stop unethical organ harvesting.

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