China Accelerates Plan to Phase Out Prisoner Organ Harvesting
Wall Street Journal China
China plans to launch a national voluntary organ donation system early next year in a bid to fulfill growing transplant lists and phase out its long-criticized reliance on organs from executed prisoners.
The country’s Ministry of Health has commissioned the Red Cross Society of China to run the nation’s organ donation system and will work with the organization to ensure that all organ procurement and transplantation is done legally, said Wang Haibo, director of the China Organ Transplant Response System Research Center of the Ministry of Health, in an interview featured in the November edition of a World Health Organization journal called the Bulletin (pdf).
Health officials have also tapped the University of Hong Kong to develop the China Organ Transplant Response System, a computer system to maintain requests according to “urgency, compatibility and patient need,†Mr. Wang said in the WHO interview.
The development of an organ donation program marks a move to overhaul of a system that has for years relied on prisoners and organ traffickers to serve people in need of transplants. “While we cannot deny the execut¬ed prisoner’s right to donate organs, an organ transplantation system relying on death-row prisoners’ organs is not ethical or sustainable,†the WHO quoted Mr. Wang as saying.
Officials in the world’s most populous country have before conceded that China has depended for many years on executed prisoners as its main source of organ supply for ailing citizens. Human-rights groups have criticized the practice, saying that organ harvesting is often forced and influences the speed and number of China’s executions.
The country’s Ministry of Health has commissioned the Red Cross Society of China to run the nation’s organ donation system and will work with the organization to ensure that all organ procurement and transplantation is done legally, said Wang Haibo, director of the China Organ Transplant Response System Research Center of the Ministry of Health, in an interview featured in the November edition of a World Health Organization journal called the Bulletin (pdf).
Health officials have also tapped the University of Hong Kong to develop the China Organ Transplant Response System, a computer system to maintain requests according to “urgency, compatibility and patient need,†Mr. Wang said in the WHO interview.
The development of an organ donation program marks a move to overhaul of a system that has for years relied on prisoners and organ traffickers to serve people in need of transplants. “While we cannot deny the execut¬ed prisoner’s right to donate organs, an organ transplantation system relying on death-row prisoners’ organs is not ethical or sustainable,†the WHO quoted Mr. Wang as saying.
Officials in the world’s most populous country have before conceded that China has depended for many years on executed prisoners as its main source of organ supply for ailing citizens. Human-rights groups have criticized the practice, saying that organ harvesting is often forced and influences the speed and number of China’s executions.
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