DAFOH and AFN Collaboration Statement
In joint collaboration, Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, DAFOH, and The Academy of Forensic Nurses, AFN, proudly share a unified vision to help end forced organ harvesting and protect and promote ethical medical and nursing practices worldwide. This effort aims to respond to the urgent global call to end forced organ harvesting and advance this mission through leadership, education, scholarship and disseminating knowledge to guide clinicians and raise awareness to the medical community and the public.
Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, DAFOH, an international 501(c) non-profit NGO based in Washington DC, was founded by medical doctors in 2006, with a mission of informing and educating the international medical and nursing community, and humanity, about the human rights crisis of unethical forced organ harvesting.
DAFOH, with offices in Taiwan, France and Italy, has published numerous independent reports and analysis on the topic of transplant medicine and forced organ harvesting in China. Twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016 and 2017, DAFOH also received the prestigious Mother Teresa Award for Social Justice in 2019 for its work in this area.
The Academy of Forensic Nurses, AFN, applies nursing science and processes to public or legal proceedings, and the application of forensic health care in the scientific investigation of trauma and/or death related to abuse, violence, criminal activity, liability, and accidents. The role and specialty of forensic nurses is globally recognized, providing trauma-informed care, collecting evidence and collaborating with governments and legal teams.
The collaboration of DAFOH and AFN represents a special niche in medical and nursing ethics which aims to help end forced organ harvesting in China and everywhere that it may occur. Organ procurement is traditionally an altruistic, life-preserving act, but forced organ harvesting stands as a crime against humanity and erodes human rights globally. The underlying violation is the worst manifestation of abuse in the medical disciplines and is considered a cold genocide. Its perpetrators aim to subvert justice, normalize violations of self-determination, free will and voluntary, informed consent.
Background:
Forced organ harvesting is dependent upon the killing of the individual who is subject to involuntary organ sourcing. In 1984, the People’s Republic of China adopted provisions promoting the involuntary harvesting of organs from executed prisoners. With the absence of a public voluntary organ donation program, this measure allowed China to develop organ transplant technology, (i.e., short ischemic times) and the most profitable organ transplant systems in the world. The object of outrage and scrutiny by the global medical community, China expanded this provision to include organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience. Organs from living prisoners of conscience has no legal backing at all, thus it remains concealed, unmentioned and covert.
Death sentences for criminal behavior accounts for a limited number of organs sourced through forced organ harvesting, but, Falun Gong and other innocent victims (Tibetans, Uyghurs, Christians and political prisoners) are not criminals for which a lethal sentence applies.
China’s transplant business grew in parallel as forced organ harvesting expanded with the sudden onset of the state sanctioned persecution of millions of Falun Gong in 1999. China reports annual numbers of organ transplants increased by at least 300% in the years after 1999. In the absence of any rational explanation of the sudden abundance of organs and unprecedented short wait times of less than 14 days for a transplant, the question of where those organs came from first emerged in the 2000s. In 2006 independent witnesses and early investigations indicated that the transplant boom in China relied heavily on organs harvested from religious Falun Gong practitioners in detention, who are reportedly the primary victims of this state sanctioned practice. Victims of a nationwide, brutal political hate campaign against them since 1999, the development of the persecution of this group runs parallel to the exponential growth of transplantation and transplant tourism in China.
Due to an insufficient global response, this gradual and insidious persecution continues today and has worsened to the level of a profitable “Cold Genocide” against Falun Gong. Never before has the world heard of systematic, state-organized killing of citizens for the purpose of harvesting human organs.
