Organ transplantation in China

Growing concerns about possible ethical abuses arising from coerced consent and corruption led medical groups and human rights organizations, by the 1990s, to condemn the practice.

[8][9] An initial investigation stated "the source of 41,500 transplants for the six year period 2000 to 2005 is unexplained" and concluded that "there has been and continues today to be large scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners".

[12] In 2008, a liver-transplant registry system was established in Shanghai, along with a nationwide proposal to incorporate information on individual driving permits for those wishing to donate their organs.

[30] The first recorded clinical liver transplant from a living donor in China took place in 1995, seven years after the world's first was performed in São Paulo, Brazil.

[34] In 2002, the Chinese media reported surgeon Dr Zheng Wei successfully transplanted a whole ovary at the Zhejiang Medical Science University to a 34-year-old patient, Tang Fangfang, from her sister.

[35] In April 2006, the Xijing military hospital in Xian carried out a face transplant operation covering the cheek, upper lip, and nose of Li Guoxing, who was mauled by an Asiatic black bear while protecting his sheep.

He alluded to a double standard writing, "I cannot imagine what would have been the reactions of the medical profession, ethics specialists, and the media if a European surgical team had performed the same operation.

[42] Amnesty International claimed to have strong evidence that the police, courts, and hospitals were complicit in the organ trade, facilitated by the use of mobile execution chambers, or "death vans".

[48] In June 2001, Wang Guoqi (王國齊), a Chinese doctor applying for political asylum, made contact with Harry Wu and his Laogai Research Foundation, who assisted Wang in testifying to the US Congress in writing that he had removed skin and corneas from more than 100 executed prisoners for the transplant market at the Tianjin Paramilitary Police General Brigade Hospital, and that during at least one such operation the prisoner was still breathing.

Harry Wu said that he had gone to "great lengths" to verify Wang's identity and that both the foundation and congressional staff members found the doctor's statements "highly credible".

[55] A BBC news report by Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in September 2006 showed negotiations with doctors in No 1 Central Hospital in Tianjin for a liver transplant.

In July 2006, the Kilgour–Matas report[8] questioned "the source of 41,500 transplants for the six year period 2000 to 2005" and thereby inferred that "the government of China and its agencies in numerous parts of the country, in particular hospitals but also detention centres and 'people's courts', since 1999 have put to death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience".

[63] Gutmann conducted extensive interviews around with former detainees in Chinese labor camps and prisons, as well as former security officers and medical professionals with knowledge of China's transplant practices.

On 12 September 2012, the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing on the topic of organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China.

[85] In June 2021, the Special Procedures of the United Nations Human Rights Council voiced concerns over having “received credible information that detainees from ethnic, linguistic or religious minorities may be forcibly subjected to blood tests and organ examinations such as ultrasound and x-rays, without their informed consent; while other prisoners are not required to undergo such examinations.” The press release stated that UN’s human rights experts “were extremely alarmed by reports of alleged ‘organ harvesting’ targeting minorities, including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims and Christians, in detention in China.”[86] In August 2024, The Diplomat reported its interview with Cheng Pei Ming, the first known survivor of China’s forced organ harvesting.

[87] Cheng, a Falun Gong practitioner, recounted how he was subjected to repeated blood tests and a subsequent forced surgery while imprisoned in China and later discovered during medical exams in the U.S. that segments of his liver and a portion of his lung had been surgically removed.

[87] Ethan Gutmann, an employee of the US government think tank Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation,[5] has said that organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience became prevalent in the northwestern province of Xinjiang during the 1990s, when members of the Uyghur ethnic group were targeted in security crackdowns and "strike hard campaigns".

[2] To further combat transplant tourism, the Health Ministry issued a notice in July 2007 in line with the Istanbul Declaration, giving Chinese citizens priority as organ recipients.

[2] In October 2007, after several years of discussions with the WHO, the Chinese Medical Association agreed to cease commercial organ collection from condemned prisoners, who would only be able to donate to their immediate relatives.

[12][103] Other safeguards implemented under the legislation include documentation of consent for organ removal from the donor, and review of all death sentences by the Supreme People's Court.

A symposium among legal and medical professionals was held in April 2008 to discuss the diagnostic criteria for brain death for donors of transplant organs.

[2] Huang Jiefu announced that the scheme, which will allow people to express their wishes on their driver's licences, would be trialled in 10 pilot regions including the cities of Tianjin, Wuhan and Shenzhen.

[106] In June 2021, Special Rapporteurs to the United Nations Human Rights Council stated that they "were extremely alarmed by reports of alleged 'organ harvesting' targeting minorities, including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims and Christians, in detention in China".

The Rapporteurs called for "China to promptly respond to the allegations of 'organ harvesting' and to allow independent monitoring by international human rights mechanisms".

[107] Beginning in 2010, Chinese authorities announced that the country would transition away from the use of prisoners as an organ source, and would rely entirely on voluntary donations coordinated through a centralized registry.

However, critics have pointed to evidence of systematic falsification of data related to voluntary organ donations, casting doubt on reform claims.

[18] The authors of the BMC Medical Ethics article also note that China's model parsimony is one to two orders of magnitude smoother than any other nation's, even those that have experienced rapid growth in their organ transplantation sector.