Doctors divided on whether China still harvests organs from executed prisoners
Critics say Beijing must prove it has stopped widely condemned practice
A Canadian patient’s receipt of a kidney transplant after waiting just three days during a recent visit to China raised an immediate red flag among surgeons at the Montreal-based Transplantation Society: a turnaround that quick indicates the organ likely came from an executed prisoner.
The case adds to doubts among many doctors internationally about whether China has met its pledge to stop harvesting the organs of executed inmates. The practice is condemned by the World Health Organisation and others because of concerns over coercive procedures and fears it could encourage executions.
China officially claims it ended the harvesting of executed inmates’ organs in January 2015. Some foreign doctors who have worked in China say authorities are behaving more responsibly, but other observers say China has not done enough to prove that it has fulfilled that pledge.
China sought to use the Transplantation Society’s decision to hold its annual meeting in Hong Kong this month as validation of its transplant programme. But Dr Philip O’Connell, the society’s president, rejected that interpretation, even if it appeared some reforms had been successful.
“We realise that this isn’t going to change in a day,” O’Connell said. “It’s not going to go from a system that was using organs from executed prisoners, that was driven by corruption and where organs were being paid for ... to a system that’s completely open, transparent and ethical.”