Christian Daily - For sale: Chinese organs

(Clearwisdom.net)

Lucrative business: China has officially banned all trade with organs, but there are advertisements on the Internet that openly offer livers, kidneys and other organs from executed prisoners. The price for a new organ is between 77,150 and 138,900 USD.

– My doctor told me, that if I didn’t get a transplant, I would only have one year left to live. At that time I was already yellow all over my body. That made me search as crazy to find a way. At the hospital in Tokyo I was number 50 on the waiting list, but then I found your company on the Internet. Thank you so much for giving me a new chance in life. S.M.

– First of all I would like to thank him or her, who donated his kidney to me. It’s a strange feeling to have someone else’s kidney in my body, but I will do everything to take care of it. K.T.

Just two examples of anonymous letters from grateful Japanese patients and customers at a company, that calls themselves JBK-Transplant. The company, which has an office in Japan and the Chinese capital Beijing, offers on the Internet transplantations of livers and kidneys at hospitals in China.

The price for a kidney is around 77,150-82,300 USD, while a new liver can be bought for 123,500-138,900 USD, dependent on age and health condition. Included in the price is the organ, the pre-examinations and hospitalization, but also most important: that the patient will move to the top of the waiting list.

JBK-Transplants website doesn’t hide that the organs come from executed prisoners in China.

The website is free to find on the Internet, even though it’s illegal to do business with organs in China. That has the leaders of the country just emphasized after the latest focus on China’s trade with organs, and especially the fact that the organs are from executed prisoners.

The critic has increased after the publication of the Canadian report that claims that the Chinese authorities keep followers of the banned, halve-religious meditation group Falun Gong in specialized death camps with the sole goal to harvest their organs.

China promptly denied Falun Gongs allegations, but recently the Chinese has after many years of denial hesitantly admitted that they use organs from executed prisoners. It’s only very limited, and only after the prisoners has given their permission, it is now said.

At the same time China implemented new regulation on 1st July, that clearly forbids buying and selling of organs. The regulation also specifies that a written acceptance must be provided from a donor, hereunder also prisoners sentenced to death or their family. Furthermore from now on only the best hospitals with official permission to transplantations are to carry them out.

Also henceforward it should not be possible for rich foreigners to jump the queue and push their way forward before Chinese patients, who needs a transplant. Around two million Chinese will annually need an organ, but only between 10,000-20,000 transplantations are carried out because of the lack of donors.

It is this gap between supply and demand that has created this growing black market for organ trade with prospect of enormous profits. Not only in China, but worldwide, where poor Indians and South Americans sell their organs to ill people from the rich part of the world.

Human rights organizations have for years tried to create awareness of the problem and to implement an international law within the area, but so far the international society has been hesitant. And in that vacuum the middlemen still rake in huge profit.

– China’s ban on organ trade is the first step in the right direction. Organs from humans should not be made merchandise. The potential for exploitation and abuse is high, when exposed and poor humans will sell, and the rich are ready to buy, says Sharon Hom, who leads Human Rights in China, an exile Chinese human rights organization with main office in USA.

But she points out that the regulation will be difficult to enforce in China, because the country doesn’t have independent courts, and the absolute ruler the communist party likes to interfere at all levels. Furthermore corruption is a big problem in China.

Despite the new regulations, a lot indicates that the trade will yet continue in China a long time. A company like JBK-Transplant will, according to themselves, carry out around 270 liver and 250 kidney transplantations annually. All together it brings an annual sale of at least 51 million USD. And the company is not alone on the market. How the capital is divided, the company will not reveal, but a qualified guess is that part of the money is used to bribe their way through the system.

That [supports] statements from Chen Zhonghua, professor at Institute for Transplantation at Tongji Hospital in Wuhan city. In the Hongkong newspaper South China Morning Post he names the market for transplantation in China as a "messy network of corruption and money, flowing between police, courts and hospitals."

The professor was involved in forming the new legislations, but criticizes them now for not being comprehensive enough, and for not delivering a concluded legislation within the area. His main objection is that the legislation doesn’t take into consideration that the majority – over 99 percent – of the organs are from executed prisoners.

– If we don’t take a stand on the question on the source of the organs, how are we to control and administer the entire area for organ transplantation in China, he asks.

Also Sharon Hom from Human Rights in China points at the problem that the organs are taken from executed prisoners.

– Even though China now has admitted that it takes place, it doesn’t take a stand on questions such as consent, abuse of prisoners and reports that one goes after specially selected groups of prisoners, she says.

According to Sharon Hom the main problem is the lack of Chinese openness regarding imprisonment and executions, and that China by routine denies independent examinations of the system, hereunder to open access to the bodies of executed prisoners. Even family members are often denied to see their relatives after the execution.

– Against that background it is difficult to watch and document the extent of abuse, she says and requests the international society to put pressure on China, so independent organizations like Red Cross can get access to prisons and labor camps.

Furthermore she requests China to publish all statistics on the number of sentenced and executed – numbers that now are kept secret.

According to human rights organization Amnesty International China executed 1770 prisoners last year, but the number is likely much higher, up to 8000 a year.

China is hereby the country in the world, that execute most people, and Amnesty International has in a former report accused the Chinese government of systematically of executing this many prisoners in preparation for promoting the lucrative trade of their organs.

The organization built the accusations on witness statements that indicate that prisoners regularly undergo medical examinations to find the right donor for the waiting patients. A former prisoner, who escaped seven years in jail, has told that he often saw sentenced prisoners made "medically ready" for removal of organs right after the execution. The night before the execution it was routine that the prison guards took a blood test of the sentenced prisoners.

British doctors have recently put forward similar accusations against the Chinese authorities: Prisoners are executed solely for selling their organs, they find. It happens after the British doctors have experienced an increasing number of patients who consider going to China, because they have to wait so long for transplantation in their homeland. Normally it takes months or years to find the right donor, but in China it sometimes takes a matter of few weeks.

– It looks like it is a potboiler, so that people specially are chosen for execution, says a press release from the British union of transplantation doctors, British Transplantation Society. They call the procedure unethical and in conflict with human rights.

Also in the Falun Gong report former prisoners tell how they in labor camps were exposed to thorough medical examinations, which could indicate that the prisoners were kept alive until their organs match the right buyer.

The authors of the report, former Canadian parliament member and prosecutor David Kilgour and Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas, has interviewed among others the authorities, doctors and former prisoners, while they were denied access to China itself. They don’t set a number of executed Falun Gong followers, but find to be able to prove that it is a deliberate Chinese politics that is similar to genocide.

Human rights organizations have so far hesitated when it comes to confirming the information, and Sharon Hom from Human Rights in China, also says that the organization doesn’t have first hand information, to confirm the report. But it awakens serious worries of violations of human rights, that a thorough and independent investigation is needed, she says.