Sparks fly as Vatican conference challenges China over executed prisoners’ organs

Participants at a Vatican conference on organ trafficking challenged China on Tuesday to allow independent scrutiny to ensure it is no longer using organs from executed prisoners, saying Chinese assurances were not enough to prove the transplant programme had been reformed.

Sparks flew in the afternoon session of the meeting as China’s former deputy health minister, Dr Huang Jiefu, sought to assure the international medical community that China was “mending its ways” after declaring an end to the prisoner harvesting programme in 2015.

“I am fully aware of the speculation about my participation in the summit,” Huang told the conference, citing “continuing concerns about the transplant activities”.

He provided scant data to rebut critics, however, showing only two slides indicating an increased number of living and deceased donors in recent years and China’s recent efforts to crack down on black market transplant activities.

Huang first publicly acknowledged the inmate harvesting organ programme in 2005 and later said as many as 90 per cent of Chinese transplant surgeries using organs from dead people came from executed prisoners.