Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Seventy years ago, at the Doctors’ Trial held in Nuremberg after World War II, United States Chief Justice Jackson said, “We are about to judge and penalize various crimes which are carefully planned, and so evil in nature. Their devastating consequences are so great. Therefore, the civilized world must not take a laissez-faire attitude because if these crimes are to repeat in the future, human civilization will cease to exist.”
Today, we find ourselves at a tipping point. The People’s Republic of China has long utilized its vast medical transplant industry to generate obscene profits by plundering the bodies of its own citizens. No one in the world, especially those in the medical profession, can continue to turn a blind eye or deaf ear and remain silent. Hollow words from a nearly century-old propaganda machine attempting to re-write history cannot be accepted. (1)
From the 2016 International Congress of the Transplantation Society in Hong Kong and the International Organ Donation Conference in Beijing to the 2017 Vatican Summit on Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism and the recent Annual China Transplant Physician Society Meeting and the Donation and Transplantation Institute’s Educational Program in Kunming, there has been a worrisome shift towards accepting the Chinese regime’s claims that reform of its organ transplant industry are ethically based.
The Chinese press release (2) in July during the run-up to last month’s Kunming conference was widely spread not only by the state-run Chinese media (3) but also by the Western media. (4) Gratefully, there are reporters (5) who question China’s claims. They acknowledge the decades long condemnation of China’s practice of harvesting organs from unwilling political prisoners and mentions eyewitness reports that “prisoners of conscience continue to experience medical testing consistent with organ donation searches and China continues to profit from the practice.” (6) This article also cites evidence that hundreds of Chinese hospitals conduct transplants without official government certification and that regional transplant surgery statistics are not publicized.
In the last few weeks, we have seen a flurry of reports (7) that China plans to soon achieve world supremacy in transplantation medicine. Yet all evidence indicates that China can only surpass the rest of the world by expanding of its currently unethical system.
Ethical transplantation systems must have in place well organized free and voluntary organ donation mechanisms with full transparent and traceable organ procurement, allocation and distribution procedures. Since its inception, human organ transplantation in China has not been based on internationally accepted ethical principles. Decades of transplant abuse cannot be erased by empty promises and platitudes.
What would Chief Justice Jackson say today about the Chinese regime’s use of the medical profession to conduct their campaign of genocide, which violates the core ethics of human civilization? It is a grievous mistake to applaud touted reforms that only serve to cover up crimes against humanity. We must all speak out now to stop this atrocity or risk being forever condemned by future generations in the annals of history.
Ann F. Corson, MD
Editor-in-Chief
