Thousands of the world’s transplant professionals gathered in Hong Kong, China, for their bi-annual international congress event, and Hard To Believe was represented at a booth, where we were able to talk to many doctors. Our materials posed a simple question to attendees:
How does China source thousands of organs for transplant every year with so few voluntary donors?
It quickly became very obvious how few doctors really know the transplant situation in China, and how much they depend on the voice of their official transplantation associations to inform them about the malpractice taking place. Sadly, that education is still yet to happen.
The Transplantation Society and the World Health Organization are yet to come to the same conclusion that the US government did this year in a Congressional Resolution where they stated:
H.Res.343 - Expressing concern regarding persistent and credible reports of systematic, state-sanctioned organ harvesting from non-consenting prisoners of conscience in the People's Republic of China, including from large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners and members of other religious and ethnic minority groups.
These representative medical organizations are still yet to make clear the distinction between China’s use of executed criminal prisoners and murdered prisoners of conscience - the latter making up the majority of China’s sources of organs for transplant.
Some members of the medical community, including members of the international NGO, Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) who called upon the Congress organizers to not honor Chinese surgeons involved in organ harvesting, boycotted the Congress to protest China’s abusive transplant system. All this controversy led to a series of articles on the issue in the New York Times.
The Epoch Times kept a close watch on events with reports of doctors from China being stopped from presenting papers due to their research involving unethically sourced organs, controversial Chinese media reports and a rebel transplant conference.
And last, but hardly least, two past Presidents of The Transplantation Society were found to have undisclosed partnerships with Chinese hospitals — that could have very likely played a role in their previous silence over the murderous transplant system in China.
It was certainly an eventful week that pushed organ harvesting into mainstream media coverage and was an important step towards movement from the medical community to helping to end China’s abusive transplant system instead of trying to work within it.
