News in Review

Paul NW, Caplan A, Shapiro ME, Els C, Allison KC, Li H. Determination of Death in Execution by Lethal Injection in China. Cambridge Quarterly Healthcare Ethics. 2018; 27:459-466

A recent Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics publication introduces the characteristics of transplants in China, which include on-demand prescheduled surgeries, short wait times, and the extraction of whole vital organs from living sources, effectively killing the donor. The authors analyzed a case reported in a Chinese medical journal in which an organ “donor” satisfied neither brain death nor cardiac death criteria and was actually alive at the time of organ extraction.

 

Paradocs Podcast: Forced Organ Harvesting – A Modern Day Chinese Human Atrocity

DAFOH spokesperson Dr. Ann Corson was interviewed by Dr. Eric Larson, anesthesiologist at Michigan State University and founder of The Paradocs Podcast. Dr. Corson outlined the expansion of China’s state-sanctioned transplantation industry and the evidence supporting the conclusion that Chinese prisoners of conscience, primarily Falun Gong practitioners, constitute a living organ donor bank used to supply organs for transplantation-on-demand for anyone who pays.

 

Canadian Actress Censored After Testifying in Australia about Chinese Human Rights Abuses

During evidence given in Canberra to a parliamentary committee investigating organ trafficking and organ transplant tourism, Actress Anastasia Lin urged the Australian government to intervene in alleged transplant abuse in China and to prevent Australians from traveling there for organs. Lin said, “Transplant abuse in China is a deeply ingrained systematic state-sanctioned crime.”

After her testimony, Lin’s scheduled appearance on ABC’s The World program was abruptly cancelled in a phone call from the producer due to her unspecified “affiliations.”  Lin, who has spoken to media outlets all around the world, including The New York Times, The Wall-Street Journal, the BBC, and the Canadian National Broadcaster, stated she has never before encountered this kind of censorship.

 

Controversy Over Plastination Exhibits Continues to Grow

Human rights groups claim there is credible evidence that the plastination specimens that millions around the world have paid to view are actually bodies of executed prisoners and prisoners of conscience from China.

Beauty queen, Anastasia Lin questioned the origin of corpses used for the exhibit in Sidney, Australia last May.  Exhibit organizers have denied claims the bodies come from executed prisoners, yet have not produced documentation to prove the bodies were willingly donated.

After controversy raged over the Real Bodies: The Exhibition shows in Australia, NSW Greens MLC David Shoebridge introduced a motion passed by Parliament that raised questions over the provenance of the bodies used and concerns “that some are those of Chinese political prisoners who did not give full, free and informed consent to be used as object in this exhibition.”  The motion further recognized, “It is an offense against the law of NSW to improperly interfere with, or offer any indignity to, any dead human body or human remains” and that Parliament “believes as a fundamental principle that human bodies should not be exploited for commercial gain.”

 

Lords, MPs, Academics, Doctors and Human Rights Advocates Urge DNA Testing of Exhibit Corpses

An open letter to the British Prime Minister, Opposition Leader, Foreign Secretary and Secretary of State for Health from a diverse group of Lords, MPs, academics, doctors and human rights advocates demanded the Real Bodies: The Exhibition showing in Britain earlier this month be shut down immediately.  The authors cite the lack of identification and consent documents that confirm the source of the human bodies used in the exhibit and that the display of human remains without consent violates the UK Human Tissue Act of 2004.  The letter outlined various standards by which commercial operations that import human remains be required to abide by “to ensure that trafficked human bodies are not permitted to enter, and be displayed, in the UK” and pointed out that plastinated body exhibitions from China have been banned in Israel, France, Hawaii and various cities in the United States. The Czech Republic enacted legislation in 2017 that prohibits entry of such an exhibition “without written consent from the deceased.”

 

Letter to the Editor thanks Missouri Senate for speaking out against organ harvesting

In May 2018, the Missouri Senate unanimously passed Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 28 stating that “extensive and credible reports have revealed mass killing of prisoners of conscience in the People’s Republic of China, primarily practitioners of the spiritual based exercises of Falun Gong, but also other religious and ethnic minority groups, in order to obtain organs for transplants.”

 

Hong Kong community protests China’s persecution and organ harvesting of Falun Gong

On July 22nd, several local Hong Kong politicians joined Falun Gong practitioners in voicing “strong opposition to the Chinese regime’s state-sanctioned organ transplant industry, which, according to investigators, relies on forcibly removing organs from Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience in order to perform for-profit transplant surgeries.”

 

Transplant tourism occurs more than commonly thought or officially reported

Transplantation Society of Australia and New Zealand president-elect Toby Coates reported that a survey of transplant professionals revealed that the number of Australian citizens traveling abroad to procure organs is higher than expected. Nearly 100 of the surveyed professionals have cared for patients who travelled overseas for transplants. The top three destinations for the organ transplants were China, then the Philippines and then India.

 

Jiangxi provincial organ donation manager sentenced on corruption charges

Xie Xianci, Deputy Director of the organ donation management center in southeastern China’s Jiangxi Province was arrested on charges of accepting bribes from hospitals related to the acquisition of organs for transplantation. Three of these hospitals have been reported by the WOIPFG to be involved in forcibly harvesting organs from non-consenting Falun Gong practitioners. Unfortunately, China has no regulations expressly prohibiting the procurement of organs from prisoners and experts have found that the practice of for-profit forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience exists in China on an industrial scale.