Among abdominal transplant surgeon Dr. Alexander Toledo’s first patients at UNC Medical Center was a 41-year-old mother of three diagnosed with liver cancer.
The woman’s only hope for survival was a liver transplant. But that wasn’t an option because she failed to meet transplant criteria—a conclusion validated at several other medical centers. Meanwhile, non-curative treatments might prolong her life by six to nine months.
But two months later, the woman returned to the clinic with a new liver; she had flown from North Carolina to China to get a transplant.
In normal medical procedures, the primary source for a liver transplant is a deceased donor, or in some cases a living donor. In the case of the woman’s surgery in China, there was “no meaningful donor information provided to the family beyond that the donor was young and healthy,” he said.
At the time, China didn’t have an official organ donation program, and had said that organs for transplant came from executed prisoners. But investigations revealed instead that prisoners of conscience—adherents of the persecuted spiritual practice Falun Gong—were being executed for their organs.
In 2015, the Chinese regime established an organ donation program and has claimed that it stopped using organs from executed prisoners.
As a result, he said, the medical community is faced with “two realities:” first, the mass killing in China of prisoners of conscience for their organs, and the “second being the fact that all too many in the global transplant profession are determined to turn a blind eye to this first reality.”
Matas added that only a “tiny minority of the transplantation professionals globally are willing to do anything about transplant abuse in China.”
He said that some in the global transplant community have been buying “Chinese propaganda hook, line, and sinker” by uncritically repeating Party talking points seeking to discredit the evidence on mass organ harvesting.
“They echoed the Party line that the research is unverifiable, though it is both verifiable and verified beyond any reasonable doubt,” he said.
Meanwhile, researchers into transplant abuse in China weren’t invited to the conference.
Delmonico went on to express optimism that reforms would take place within China’s transplant system under the stewardship of Huang and his protégé, Wang Haibo.
Matas said the leadership at TTS and national transplantation agencies need to change their position on this issue and speak out against transplant abuse by the Chinese regime. At the same time, he said, they should introduce ethical standards to ensure overseas medical professionals aren’t complicit in the abuses.
He suggested 12 standards, including that doctors not refer transplant patients to other countries for surgery unless they can ascertain beyond a reasonable doubt that the organ donor consented freely, and that studies involving recipients of organs from prisoners of conscience not be accepted for presentation or publication.
The TTS didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
