China ‘mending ways’ on organ trafficking, says transplant doctor

Beijing is working hard to stop the forced harvesting of organs but prisoners' organs are still being used in some cases, a leading Chinese transplant surgeon has told a meeting in the Vatican on organ trafficking.

Human rights groups and medical ethicists have criticised the Holy See for hosting Huang Jiefu, a former vice-minister of health and head of the National Human Organ Donation and Transplant Committee, because it said China was using the Catholic Church to whitewash past abuses.

Dr Huang said China was “mending its ways” and insisted the use of organs from prisoners was now “not allowed”.

“In my governmental organisation there is zero tolerance,” he told reporters. “However, China is a big country with a 1.3 billion population so sure, definitely, there is some violation of the law, which will be severely punished.

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“This trip is not to whitewash our past but to let China’s voice to be heard and to introduce China’s new programme to the world,” he told the Summit on Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism, which was attended by around 80 doctors, law enforcement officers and representatives from health NGOs.

Rights groups have long complained about the practice of non-voluntary organ transplants, particularly from executed prisoners, and the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement has said the organs of thousands of its adherents were harvested after they were jailed following a crackdown in 1999.

The advocacy group Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) accused China of killing hundreds of thousands of people for their organs in the past two decades and has called on Beijing to prove it no longer harvests organs for sale.

“The lack of transparency about organ sources in China is a mask of deception. The full scope of forced organ harvesting from Chinese prisoners of conscience remains unknown,” DAFOH said in a statement.

“The Vatican should not be misled by empty pledges of reform by an atheist government that persecutes its most devout citizens.”

Zero tolerance

China insists the practice of non-voluntary organ transplants ended in 2015, and now claims zero tolerance for forced organ harvesting, as well as success in fighting corruption in its donor system.

Some 300,000 Chinese people need transplants annually, but cultural beliefs based on Confucian principles of filial piety require that a person's body be buried intact. Currently the number of China's organ donations ranks first in Asia and third in the world.

In 2005, Dr Huang acknowledged that China had harvested executed inmates’ organs for transplant, and in a paper in 2011 said up to 90 per cent of Chinese transplant surgeries using organs from executed prisoners.

There was further controversy this week when the journal Liver International decided to retract a 2016 study over concerns that its data on the safety of liver transplantation involved organs sourced from executed prisoners in China.

While the study's authors denied such organs were used, clinical ethicist Wendy Rogers of Macquarie University in Sydney wrote a letter calling for the paper's retraction in the "absence of credible evidence of ethical sourcing of organs," Science magazine reported.

Dr Huang’s attendance at the conference comes as Beijing tries to improve ties with the Holy See.

China cut off relations with the Vatican in 1951, two years after the Communists won the civil war. In recent months, Pope Francis has taken the initiative in efforts to re-establish diplomatic ties and heal the rift where the country's 12 million Catholics are divided between those loyal to Rome and those belonging to the state-controlled official church.

Additional reporting: Reuters