A Chinese Organ Transplant Expert's Sudden Death and His Involvement in Organ Harvesting

(Minghui.org) According to an official announcement from Qingdao University Hospital in Shandong Province on February 26, its Organ Transplant Center director Zang Yunjin suddenly died that morning at age 57. 

Numerous sources said Zang committed suicide by jumping off a building. “He jumped out from the 16th floor in Qingdao Hospital. It is not a secret,” wrote one netizen. “There could be an unspoken scandal behind it,” another one added. 

Zang is not the first organ transplant expert in China that has committed suicide in recent years. 

Li Baochun, organ transplant expert from the Second Military Medical University in Shanghai, jumped out from the 12th floor in May 2007 and died.

Li Leishi, a kidney transplant pioneer from Nanjing General Hospital of the People's Liberation Army in Jiangsu Province, jumped out of his home on the 14th floor in 2010 and died. He was 84.

Zhang Shilin, deputy director of the Urology Department at Shanghai Tumor Hospital, jumped out of his office on the 8th floor on March 24, 2014. He hit the hospital's oxygen tank and died. 

Since the crime of forced organ harvesting was exposed in 2006, a large number of hospitals have been reported to be involved in the atrocity. They include the facilities that Zang used to work. 

Trained in Organ Transplants

Zang Yunjin (臧运金) was born in 1964 and he worked at Shandong Province First Medical University Hospital (also known as Qianfoshan Hospital) for 15 years. In February 1999, he went to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and studied at Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute, where he learned about organ transplant from John J. Fung, then President of the International Liver Transplantation Society (ILTS).

In September 2001, Zang joined Tianjin First Central Hospital Transplant Surgery Division, a facility established in 1998 and later renamed Oriental Organ Transplant Center in 2003. Under the direction of the facility’s founder, Shen Zhongyang, Zang was able to do liver transplants independently in a short time. He also successfully supervised over 100 liver transplants in Hebei, Henan, Shandong, and other provinces. 

In January 2005, Zang joined the Armed Police General Hospital in Beijing as deputy director of the Liver Transplant Institute. In the meantime, he was director of the Liver Transplant Division of Qianfoshan Hospital. He was also chief surgeon of the Transplant Department at Tianjin First Central Hospital, professor of Tianjin Medical University, and director of the Liver Transplant Center at You’an Hospital in Beijing. 

In 2014, Zang joined Qingdao University Hospital and launched an organ transplant center. Meanwhile, he was a Ph.D. advisor and vice president of Qingdao University Medical Group.

Unexplained Organ Source

As of 2015, there have been about 1.5 million organ transplants in China and the source of organs remains a mystery. 

After the crime of forced organ harvesting was exposed in 2006, numerous independent investigations have confirmed its existence. Human rights lawyer David Matas and former Canadian MP David Kilgour published their work in a 2009 book titled Bloody Harvest to reveal this “new form of evil on our planet” with different types of evidence. “Falun Gong practitioners were arrested in the hundreds of thousands and asked to recant. If they did not, they were tortured. If they still did not recant, they disappeared,” wrote the authors.

After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began to suppress Falun Gong in 1999, a large number of practitioners were illegally arrested and detained. Meanwhile, the number of organ transplants rose sharply and the sources of the organs remained unknown. Furthermore, in whatever hospital Zang worked, the number of liver transplants it carried out would be the highest in the region. 

For example, between January 2004 and August 2008, Zang extracted about 1,600 livers at Tianjin First Central Hospital. They included 1,591 males and 9 females with an average age of 34.5. 

Although CCP officials have tightly covered up information about the crime, there have reports about it published on Minghui.org. Mr. He Lifang, a resident in Qingdao City, Shandong Province, died in custody on July 2, 2019, two months after his last arrest for refusing to renounce his faith in Falun Gong.

Mr. He's family noticed a sewn-up incision on his chest and an open incision on his back. The police first claimed the incisions were a result of an autopsy before changing their story to say that a medical examiner would come shortly. But no coroner ever showed up.

Mr. He’s loved ones suspect that his organs may have been harvested either while he was still alive or shortly after his death, and that's the real reason for the incisions. They also suspect psychiatric abuse as he lost his speech and became unresponsive within just 17 days of his detention.

It was estimated that about 200 police officers and over 20 police vans were dispatched between June 30, the day Mr. He was transferred from Pudong Detention Center in the Jimo District to Chengyang Third Hospital, and July 3, 2019, the day after his death. Coming from the Jimo District Police Department and subordinate police stations, these officers carried extra handcuffs and patrolled the hospital and its vicinity. They were ready to arrest anyone who came to the hospital to show support for Mr. He. An officer surnamed Yao from the Beian Neighborhood Committee specifically warned Falun Gong practitioners to stay away. 

Qingdao University Hospital is a 3A hospital, the top-tier medical facility in China. Its Organ Transplant Center has about 27 beds, with mainly liver transplant patients. Almost all the beds are occupied and there are surgeries almost every day or once every two days. The wait time is usually one week and each surgery costs about one million yuan (or $154,000). 

The hospital's official announcement said Zang had conducted over 2,600 liver transplants. Because of this involvement in organ harvesting, he has been pursued by the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG).