Since the first organ transplant was performed. doctors, “ethicists,” and other interested parties have debated morally acceptable means of procuring organs. Some have suggested that prisoners condemned to death constitute an acceptable pool for organ harvest. China now admits that human organs for transplantation are largely derived from executed prisoners.
For the first time, the Chinese government has admitted selling the organs of executed prisoners for profit, a gruesome business it had denied for years.
Speaking at a national conference of transplant surgeons in Guangzhou last week, Vice-Minister of Health Huang Jiefu admitted, “Apart from a small portion of traffic victims, most of the organs from cadavers are from executed prisoners,” according to the China Daily, a state-run English-language newspaper published in Beijing.
Harry Wu, an outspoken critic of the Communist government, has long accused the Chinese of harvesting organs from executed prisoners. China has previously denied the practice. Further,
Wu says that poor Chinese are selling their organs on the black market, even though it is now illegal in China to sell organs for profit.
Sophie Richardson, an Asia expert for Human Rights Watch, says China still has a long way to go to improve its human rights standards. “This is the beginning of an effort to look like it’s responding to concerns about some pretty grotesque behavior.”
More blood on the hands of the Communists.
