Chinese doctors have made a lot of advances in organ transplantation that a surgeon in Harbin is planning to perform the world first whole body transplant. While Dr. Xiaoping Ren’s chances of success may be questioned by the medical community, his source of the head and body for the procedure would likely not be doubted because of the pioneering status of the planned landmark surgery.
However, the source of other body organs, such as heart, kidney and liver, has been questioned in the past because of previous exposes that these body parts were forcibly taken from prisoners. When China was criticized by international human rights organizations over the practice, authorities said only 10,000 legal transplants take place yearly sourced from the country’s voluntary organ donation system.
But a new report by CNN said the killing of prisoners for their body parts continue. It estimated organ transplantations at 60,000 to 100,000 body parts annually.
An ex-Canadian legislator, a human rights lawyer and a journalist, who wrote the report, claimed the practice of harvesting organ is widespread and systematic. They identified inmates with views contrary to the Communist Party of China as the ones killed for their organs.
The difference between the 10,000 and the 100,000 comes from prisoner with different political or religious views from the party. But it would be difficult to come up with proof of that because of the secrecy that comes with China’s execution of convicts.
On Thursday, during a regular press conference, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying denied the accusation of forced organ harvesting as imaginary and baseless, lacking in factual foundation.