Committee on Foreign Affairs Hearing: Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations, and the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats
2:00 pm, June 23, 2016 in Room 2200, Rayburn House Office Building: “Organ Harvesting: An Examination of a Brutal Practice”
Witnesses
Mr. David Matas
Senior Legal Counsel
B’nai Brith Canada
[full text of statement]
[truth in testimony form]
Mr. Ethan Gutmann
Journalist
[full text of statement]
[truth in testimony form]
Francis L. Delmonico, M.D
Professor of Surgery
Harvard Medical School
[full text of statement]
[truth in testimony form]
Charles Lee, M.D.
Director of Public Awareness
World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong
[full text of statement]
[truth in testimony form]
“US legislation should make organ transplant abuse and brokerage extraterritorial crimes. The legislation should require compulsory medical and hospital reporting of all out of country transplantation... Insurers should be prevented from covering and paying for abusive transplantation abroad. Pharmaceutical companies should not be allowed to participate in drug trials with patients using organs from improper sources.”
— David Matas
“When it comes to abusive transplantation, we have to think not only of the patient in need of an organ, but also the source of the organ. It is unconscionable to kill a healthy person so that a sick person can live. The US must do everything in its power to stop that from happening.”
— David Matas
“We cannot solve this problem by pretending that prisoners of conscience have not been harvested. ”
— Ethan Gutmann
“I have been told this is a Falun Gong issue. No, this is the familiar specter of human genocide—cloaked in modern scrubs. Even with a united effort, we may lose the patient. Yet let us at least enter the operating room with clean hands.”
— Ethan Gutmann
“With the papers we have examined, the vast majority of the descriptions regarding the health condition of the “donors” are perfectly healthy; no contagious diseases, sexually transmitted diseases, cardiovascular diseases, cancer or any drug abuse history.
One is forced to wonder: Is this the typical health profile of a criminal?”
— Charles Lee, M.D.