FAITH UNDER FIRE
Exposed!
China's organ-on-demand transplants
'Bloody
Harvest' says prisoners kept healthy
until paying customer arrives
A new report called
"Bloody Harvest" documents China's
"anything goes" transplant industry
where a cornea is available to anyone
with $30,000 and people are kept as
prisoners until their organs are
needed, when they are executed by a
doctor's needle just as soon as the
cash hits the hospital accounting
office.
The report from David
Matas, an international human rights
lawyer, and David Kilgour, the former
Canadian Secretary of State for
Asia-Pacific, was just released and
updates previous documents alleging
the existence of the billion dollar
industry.
The new report, taken
cumulatively, provides the proof,
Kilgour told WND.
"We've talked to a
lot of people who received organs,
people who managed to get out [of
China] by the skin of their teeth. We
talked to a lady beaten up so badly
she heard a doctor say she was going
to die and her organs would be no
good. We've looked at the web sites
offering organs. We think we now have
overwhelming evidence for any
fair-minded or reasonable person," he
said.
"Every single item
points in the same direction, and
nothing points in the direction of
innocence," he said.
Web sites have posted
prices, in U.S. dollars, of $150,000
for a kidney or pancreas,
$150,000-$170,000 for a lung, and
$130,000-$160,000 for a heart, and
those same sites suggest the maximum
wait for a liver available for
transplant would be two weeks,
although the same wait period in
British Columbia was 52 months.
"The astonishingly
short waiting times advertised for
perfectly-matched organs would suggest
the existence of a large bank of live
prospective 'donors,'" the report
said.
Some of the most
damning evidence came from several
individuals who have fled the
industry. One woman testified her
husband, a surgeon, had removed the
corneas from an estimated 2,000 people
who, at that point, still were alive.
But they then were operated on by
other surgeons to remove other organs,
and the bodies then cremated.
The money trail was
tracked from the patients to the
hospital, but it remained unclear
whether the hospital, the government,
or the surgeons were benefiting the
most, the report said. But it
concluded that the magnitude of the
atrocities goes beyond even what
Hitler pursued in his attempt to
eradicate Jews and other groups of
people, he said.
"This is just about
at the limit of the human imagination,
some people would say it's beyond. We
avoid direct comparisons, because it
really is unique. Even the Nazis
didn't try to do this," he said.
He characterizes it
as "carnivore capitalism" where
nothing matters but the money. The
report lists new evidence
showing that hospitals are telling
potential transplant recipients that
they have live organs awaiting
delivery and there have been tens of
thousands of transplant surgeries
performed in the past few years – with
no other available source of organs.
China's human rights
record is atrocious, the report said,
with more deaths attributable to its
Communist government than to Stalin
and Hitler combined. The nation
routinely violates the rights of
Christians, democracy advocates, human
rights advocates and others, including
using detention, torture and
execution.
But the targets for
the burgeoning industry at this point
are mostly members of a religious sect
called Falun Gong. That's a belief
system that was assembled in the early
1990s by Li Hongzhi and incorporates
ideas from Buddhism and Taoism. It's
generally seen as a peaceful movement,
but China government officials have
labeled it a dangerous cult and banned
it.
But in a social
atmosphere that tolerates only what
officials decide they want to allow,
there is no accountability for
hospitals or physicians who are
constantly short of funding, and there
is zero tolerance for dissent, the
nation's transplant industry has
exploded because there has been no
barrier to marketing – and selling –
the organs of "enemies of the state."
"Once a customer
arrives into China, somebody's killed
for the organ, whether it's a prisoner
sentenced to death or a Falun Gong
practitioner, and they just have this
huge supply of people in jail waiting
to be killed for organ donations,"
Matas told reporters at a recent news
conference.
Liver transplants,
counted at only 22 before 1999,
multiplied to 500 just last year. And
while China has admitted "harvesting"
the organs of inmates executed for
capital crimes, the number of those
executions has remained about the same
– in the 1,600 to 1,700 range – for a
number of years. However, while
reports that are available to the
public show there were about 30,000
transplant surgeries in China prior to
1999, that total rocketed to 90,000 by
the end of 2005.
Those 60,000 organ
transplant surgeries during the years
2000-2005 each needed a donor organ,
and historically in China the numbers
show only a fraction of all
transplants are provided by living
donors, such as in kidney cases, or a
body made available voluntarily
following a traffic accident or other
circumstances.
"There is no
indication of a significant increase
in … these categories in recent years.
Presumably, the identified sources of
organ transplants which produced
18,500 organ transplants in the
six-year period 1994 to 1999 produced
the same number of organs for
transplants in the next six-year
period 2000 to 2005," the report said.
"That means that the
source of 41,500 transplants for the
six-year period 2000 to 2005 is
unexplained," the report said.
Some of the
explanation comes from a volunteer who
testified to the authors about calling
80 hospitals in China, asking about
transplants. Ten locations admitted
using "live" Falun Gong practitioners
as organ suppliers.
One hospital official
was asked about the organs for
transplant. "…And it was from healthy
Falun Gong practitioners…?"
"Correct.
We would choose the good ones because
we assure the quality in our
operation," the hospital official
said.
"That means you
choose the organs yourself?"
"Correct…"
"Usually, how old
is the organ supplier?"
"Usually in their
thirties."
"What if the chosen
one doesn't want to have blood
drawn?"
"He will for sure
let us do it."
"How?"
"They will for sure
find a way. What do you worry about?
These kinds of things should not be
of any concern to you. They have
their procedures."
"Does the person
know that his organ will be
removed?"
"No."
The researchers, both
from Canada, noted that there is no
doubt Canadians are taking part in
"organ tourism," which is traveling to
China for a transplant. Confirmations
have come in from hospitals in
Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary that
such trips were taking place.
Patients from the
United States and other affluent
countries, also, undoubtedly, are
taking part in the industry, the
report noted.
Kilgour told WND that
the report reveals that Falun Gong
practitioners, probably tens of
thousands, are held in detention camps
while, during their lives, they
assemble products for export. But they
are blood-typed and given various
tests regularly.
Then there's a
computer matchup of tissue. "His or
her day comes up, somebody's waiting
in a hospital in Shanghai, and you can
die that day. The patient flies back
to America with a new kidney," he
said.
Patients routinely
are told they are getting organs from
executed prisoners who volunteered for
the donation. The description of
"executed prisoner," technically, is
true, he said, but the caveat is that
the "prisoners" never commited – or
were convicted – of any crime.
The report suggests
the rest of the world could help by
preventing patients from traveling to
China for a transplant where neither
the donor nor the family have
consented, stopping funding for
after-care for patients who have
commercial transplants abroad, stop
training of doctors who will return to
China and join the transplant industry
and ban shipping anti-rejection drugs
and other necessities for transplants
to China.
"We believe that
there has been and continues today to
be large-scale organ seizures from
unwilling Falun Gong practitioners,"
they said in the report.
Kilgour
earlier told the Epoch Times
that the 2008 Olympic Games, awarded
by the International Olympic Committee
to China, also should be used as a
lever to stop the activity
Chinese officials
have admitted "harvesting" organs from
"executed prisoners," but that
admission did not come until 2005, and
the report authors say it might have
been made to divert attention away
from the industry of killing innocent
sect members for their organs.
The authors said the
report on the study, which was done at
the request of the Coalition to
Investigation the Persecution of the
Falun Gong in China, a
non-governmental organization in
Washington and Ottawa, also is
available at www.organharvestinvestigation.net.
Consultant struck off
for actively ending patient's life
A hospital consultant investigated over
the deaths of dozens of patients was
struck off the medical register
yesterday for taking "active measures"
to end the life of a patient against his
family's wishes.
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