Executions 'main source of organs' for transplant programme
EXECUTED prisoners have become the principle source of supply for China's organ transplant programme, according to a new report by the New York-based human rights group, Human Rights Watch/Asia.
The report issued today to coincide with the 15th Congress of the World Transplant Society in Kyoto, Japan, also claims that executions have been deliberately botched in order to secure fresh organs from living prisoners and that in some cases organs have been removed prior to execution.
Although Chinese law requires the authorities to obtain the consent of prisoners for organ donations, consent is rarely sought and prisoners are often not told of their impending execution until the night before, the report said.
The report further claims that the lack of judicial safeguards in China ''guarantees that many people will be wrongfully executed - and become unwitting organ donors''.
The presence of doctors at the execution site and their involvement in the execution process violates international standards of medical ethics, the report contends.
China and much of East Asia suffer from a serious shortage of organs for transplant because of the traditional reluctance of people to donate their organs after death.
This, combined with the significant increase in judicial executions since China launched its crime crackdown in 1983, the report claims, has led to condemned prisoners becoming the biggest single source of supply for organ transplants in the mainland.
Most of the organs removed from executed prisoners, mainly kidneys and corneas, are transplanted into government or military officials as well as rich foreigners and overseas Chinese.
A survey conducted by a surgeon at Hong Kong's Prince of Wales Hospital found that 75 per cent of Hong Kong patients who underwent transplant operations in China received their new organs from executed prisoners.
Based on this survey, the Human Rights Watch/Asia report estimates the number of kidneys taken from executed prisoners and used in transplant operations in 1992 would have been about 1,400.
The report added that the figure had likely increased annually since 1992. While the practice of using executed prisoners organs is widely accepted, even supported by many people in China as a way for criminals to repay their last debt to society, the report's allegations of vivisection have raised considerable cause for concern.
The report quotes from a 1988 training manual for state prosecutors as saying; ''A very few localities, in order to be able to use particular organs from the criminals' bodies, even go so far as to deliberately avoid killing them completely when carrying out the death sentence, so as to preserve the live tissue.'' A former Shanghai police official interviewed by Human Rights Watch/Asia claimed that at one execution he witnessed the prisoner was shot in the heart, not the head as usual, in order to preserve his eyes for transplant. ''This is what happens,'' the official said, ''if they need the heart, the prisoner will be shot in the head instead.'' Other anecdotal evidence suggests that medical transplant teams at the execution site often do not wait until the prisoner is dead before beginning the transplant procedure.
It is difficult to estimate how widespread these abuses are but Chinese sources in Beijing familiar with the execution process say that as far as possible proper procedures are adhered to.
''Of course, it is possible for mistakes to be made but personally I have never heard of prisoners being kept alive for organ removal,'' a Beijing doctor said.
''Medically speaking there is no great advantage to removing organs from a live body rather than one that has only been dead for an hour or so,'' he said.
All members of the medical profession interviewed on the subject agreed however that such abuses, if they exist, should be stamped out immediately.
