China admits to organ market

[VespertineIconoclast]

Executed prisoners' body parts are sold

By Mark Magnier and Alan Zarembo, Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times
Published November 18, 2006

BEIJING -- After years of denial, China has acknowledged that many of the human organs used in transplants here are taken from executed prisoners and that many of the recipients are foreigners who pay hefty sums to avoid a long wait.

Speaking at a conference of surgeons in the southern city of Guangzhou, Deputy Health Minister Huang Jiefu called for a strict code of conduct and better record keeping to stem China's thriving illegal-organ trade, state media reported.

"Apart from a small portion of traffic victims, most of the organs from cadavers are from executed prisoners," Huang said, as reported by the English-language China Daily newspaper Thursday. "The current organ donation shortfall can't meet demand."

Acknowledgment of what had been an open secret on the Internet, in local magazines and among people waiting for transplanted organs came weeks after China announced tighter oversight of death-penalty cases. Legal experts say requiring the country's highest court to approve death sentences could reduce the number by a third.

...

Americans are among the foreigners who have headed to China for transplants as the waiting time for kidneys and livers has grown in the United States. U.S. transplant doctors say the majority seem to be patients of Chinese ancestry who feel comfortable navigating the medical system there.

More than 11,000 organs a Chinese transplant doctor, Dr. Zhonghua Chen, said at a conference in Boston in July that Chinese doctors had transplanted 8,102 kidneys, 3,741 livers and 80 hearts in 2005.

...

China has faced a growing call for change from reform-minded lawyers and academics. It also has been embarrassed by a chorus of overseas criticism, including a campaign by Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned in China that Beijing condemns as an "evil cult."

In July, a report by Canadian human-rights lawyer David Matas and David Kilgour, a former parliamentarian, concluded that hearts, kidneys, livers and corneas have been taken from Falun Gong practitioners and sold for large sums. The movement says its members are executed on trumped up charges to supply the organ trade. Beijing has denied the charges.

"Based on what we know, we have come to the regrettable conclusion that the allegations are true," the report said.

<snip>

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0611180201nov18,1,7098546.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

[WindRavenX]

1. lol, I can't believe we hate Cuba and worship China

:puke: :puke: :puke:

[barb162]

13. Umm, I never worshipped China

They are big time human rights violators from way back. The way they dealt with the bird flu, their AIDS victims, using prison labor like factory farms when the prisoners have never been charged,etc., tells you a lot about how they deal with baisc human rights.

[pinerow]

2. I'm Shocked...!...Shocked, I tell ya...

nt

[VespertineIconoclast]

6. Sadly, my Chinese friend told me about this some time ago....

She called a hospital in China pretending to be someone looking for a liver for her father and the hospital told her that they could get her the organ as soon as the following week!

Disturbing stuff....

[Coventina]

3. Gross. China, please join us in the 21st century, thank you.

:puke:

[MADem]

4. But trade and close ties with China are encouraged, while stem cell research is a bozo no-no.

Go figure!!!

[Demeter]

5. So Tell Us: Did Osama Get That New Kidney?

[Viva_La_Revolution]

7. EVIDENCE OF HARVESTING FROM LIVE PRISONERS!

First of all, we would like to emphasize the following: we, whether as reporters or simply as human beings, would not wish that what we reported was true. Sometimes we hoped that the live organ removal was a misunderstanding and didn't exist. Unfortunately, as we conducted more in-depth investigation, we believed even more that this has happened.

The Epoch Times is a newspaper, a newspaper with a particular strength on China-related issues. Our focus is the ongoing human rights violations in China, corruption of officials, and news about the persecution of minority groups. The above news cannot get reported in China's state-owned media. Nor is it reported in Chinese-language media outside China. Therefore the The Epoch Times has become a major news source in which Chinese people can read honest, factual reporting about China.

At the beginning of March, a Chinese journalist revealed something shocking to us: At a hospital in the Sujiatun District of Shenyang City, organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners was being done on a large-scale. Shortly afterwards, another person, a person who used to work at the hospital and whose then husband had performed organ harvesting on a daily basis, verified this information. The Epoch Times published a series of reports starting on March 9.

That the news has attracted a lot of attention from many people, including Falun Gong practitioners, human rights organizations, some news organizations and some governments, is not surprising. The denial of the Chinese government is not surprising at all, either.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/6-4-13/40394.html


This is not the whole story folks.... :(

[VespertineIconoclast]

8. It's horrific!

I don't know how familiar everyone is with Falun Gong, but it is basically a religious movement in China that had begun to gain popularity in China in the early 1990's. The Chinese Communist Party began to crack down on the practitioners basically because the religion turned the people's attention towards something other than the political party. Can you imagine being put into arrested, executed, AND harvested for your religious beliefs?!

I believe that you are right the rabbit hole does go much deeper.... :(

[Miss Chybil]

9. Americans who go there to buy organs should have to stay there.

Or, go to jail when they come back here.

Maybe, then we could execute them and recycle their parts again! Woohoo! /sarcasm

[VespertineIconoclast]

10. I find it distressing to think that most Americans may not care what is going on in China.

I would say that those Americans seeking to get the organs don't really question or care about where the organ came from and why is was quicker to get it in China than in the US....

[Miss Chybil]

11. Willful ignorance. nt

[VespertineIconoclast]

12. Exactly.

:mad: