August 25, 2006 Friday

Life works in mysterious ways. At the final gathering of the recent 16th World Congress of the World Society of Cardio-Thoracic Surgeons, I chaired a session on the impact that religions can make on increasing the availability of organs and tissues in Canada.

The participants included Bishop Peter Coffin, Monsignor Pat Powers, Abdul Rashid, and Dr. Frank Markel, who is the CEO of the Trillium Gift of Life Network, the provincial agency responsible for organ and tissue donation.

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After the pointed and helpful presentations, a question was raised from the floor about the now famous "Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China" issued by human-rights lawyer David Matas and former MP David Kilgour on July 6.

The report offers quite conclusive evidence that organs such as kidneys, livers, lungs and hearts are taken from Falun Gong practitioners in China to be made available to those who are ready to pay $130,000 to $160,000 for a heart, for example. The now heartless Falun Gong practitioner is dead, murdered in a most barbaric way to make money.

Dr. Markel correctly condemned this practice during our panel discussion, after which I remarked that I had just interviewed David Kilgour on my radio program, was about to interview David Matas on this topic, and had indicated to Mr. Kilgour that my program would be available to him whenever he needed it to fight this matter until these atrocities are stopped, even if it means boycotting the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

That was like a dam had burst. A somewhat unanticipated question led to an unrehearsed remark, and who knows where it will lead? I have no regrets about making the remark, and in fact am happy that it has caused such a furor, starting with the Ottawa Citizen headline of Aug. 21, "Boycott Beijing Games, Canada urged."

Before making any further comment, let me state for the record that the major figures in this issue are Mr. Kilgour and Mr. Matas, who worked diligently on the report and are dedicated to a fight to the end to have this mass atrocity stopped forever. Any success that is achieved will be to their enduring credit, as life-long champions of human rights.

Between 2000 and 2005, the source of 41,500 organs in China is unclear. China does not have a developed national voluntary donor program. Family donors or non-family brain-dead donors account for, at most, one per cent of donations in China. In this period, kidney transplants just about tripled, and liver transplants jumped astronomically to 4,000 in 2005, compared with about 150 in 1998, and with promised waiting times of one week -- unheard of in the civilized world.

Consider the China International Transplantation Network Assistance Centre website (http://en.zoukiishoku.com/). The Matas-Kilgour report indicates that as of May 17, 2006, the English version of that site stated that the centre was established in 2003 at the First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University "specifically for foreign friends.

Most of the patients are from all over the world." Though the original opening page of the site has been changed, the older version can still be found, the opening sentence of which declares that "Viscera (soft interior organs such as the lungs and the heart) providers can be found immediately."

In the question-and-answer section, the site advertises that "Before the living kidney transplantation, we will ensure the donor's renal function. ... So it is more safe than in other countries, where the organ is not from a living donor." And the answer to "Are the organs for the pancreas transplant from brain death patients?" is: "Our organs do not come from brain death victims because the state of the organs may not be good."

This is damning evidence by their own words. Anyone who knows anything about organ donations would be horrified to learn that organs come from "live" patients, and are promised within the week or month, including kidneys, livers and hearts. It means that live patients are being killed to provide organs.

By their own words, and the corroborating interviews and calls, are the Chinese authorities condemned.

The Matas-Kilgour report concludes that Falun Gong practitioners, who by their lifestyles are quite healthy, are being murdered and their organs sold. The Canadian government is apparently studying this, as are international watchdog agencies.

People who are capable of these atrocities are not trustworthy. Promises that things are better are worthless. International oversight is an absolute must to ensure that this unspeakable horror stops.

Transplant organizations as well as medical and academic institutions are right to put the brakes on any co-operation with China unless and until these murders cease. But this is far more than a medical and research issue. This is a human-rights breach of the worst order, and demands a response on the international level commensurate with the monstrous evil.

Governments must raise their collective voices in disgust at this, and condemn it in uncompromising terms. The traffic flow to China for these "procedures" needs to be stopped. We are capable of monitoring this if we set our minds to it.

Any muscle that we have, both collectively and individually, needs to be brought to bear in this fight. Governments should look at the propriety of any trade with China, and individuals should think about the morality of buying items that are made in China until this stops, with finality and with proof of same.

The Olympics is the last stop in this process. That is a few years away, and the situation demands immediate and forceful attention. But if, God forbid, nothing happens between now and then, I cannot imagine that any self-respecting athlete would want to be involved in any activity, athletic or otherwise, that gives credibility, acceptability and respectability to a regime worthy of nothing more than utter contempt and revulsion.

One of the comments I received after the Citizen article questioned why this calling China to account should be restricted to organ harvesting.

Why not protest vehemently the torture and murder of so many Falun Gong, organs or no organs? Right on. How about it, China? And while we are at it, China, what about the suffering of your Tibetans, Christians, Uighurs and human-rights activists?