Things to Ponder

     Imagine going to your doctor’s office for a simple surgical procedure. You’re put to sleep. When you awake you discover a scar on your side, and later it is determined that one of your kidneys is gone, without your consent. Imagine turning to your government for help, only to discover it is part of an international conspiracy to generate revenue for its army, the very system to which you should be able to turn to for support. Imagine being a prisoner on death row, unjustly accused, but thinking you have plenty of time to appeal your case. Only, to meet a transplant demand, your life is abruptly ended, to sustain the life of an important dignitary or foreigner, you never even knew, in some faraway land, without yours or your family’s consent.
     The number of people in need of organ transplants is vast, the world supply of available organs short. “Only 25 percent of 78,000 organ transplants needed will occur in time to save a life, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit agency the government pays to oversee the nation’s organ donor network...Fifteen people die each day waiting for an organ transplant," the agency says.1 The shortage of human organs, a dreadful realization, has left executed prisoners in China and poor people in India and other countries defenseless against their ruling governmental bodies. Executed prisoners in China have been stripped of their skin, and/or robbed of their corneas, kidneys, and other organs. Poor people in India, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and a host of other countries have reportedly been robbed of vital body parts. Important dignitaries and rich people around the world have been driven to desperate and deplorable measures to sustain theirs, or their family’s lives, for substantial costs, that the ordinary man or woman cannot afford. And constant news stories of the desperate acts taking place around the globe have left many people here in the States too scared to volunteer their organs on the back of their driver’s licenses to people desperately in need of them, for fear that their lives might be involuntarily shortened to meet another’s organ needs. And the profits from transplants of illegal and inhuman organs have fattened the pockets of politicians, armies, and governments, alike, around the world.
     But, by far, China has emerged from ongoing investigations the leader of sales from the black market of human organs. In David J. Rothman’s congressional testimony on June 16, 1998, he states that the sale of body parts by the People’s Republic of China has been “…confirmed by former Chinese prisoners, from Chinese transplant surgeons who have left the country as well as former Chinese police and prison officials…[and] corroborated by compelling circumstantial evidence. For one, patients who travel to China for a kidney are told the precise date of their operation – something which could not be done were donation a matter of change…(One American transplant surgeon told…of an invitation he received from China to perform a heart transplant; when he asked how he could be assured that an organ would be available during the week he would be there, he was told that an execution would be set to fit his schedule. The surgeon turned down the invitation.)”2
     As stated July 6, 2001 on NRO by Ann Noonan, policy director for the Laogai Foundation, “One of the most gruesome human-rights abuses in today’s world is China’s trafficking of its own executed prisoners’ body parts to American residents. This atrocity was documented by testimony given June 27th during a U.S. congressional hearing.” In this hearing, one of many witnesses to China’s organ harvesting, Harry Wu, a human rights activist, testified. Now residing in the United States, Mr. Wu was formerly the executive director of the Laogai Research Foundation who suffered in China’s Laogai for 19 years. He presented a copy of the Laogai Research Foundation’s May 2001 report, “Communist Charity, A Comprehensive Report on the Harvesting of Organs from Executed Prisoners of the People’s Republic of China” to the House International Operations and Human Rights Subcommittee. “In his report, Mr. Wu explained ‘The Chinese government controls and operates a system to harvest organs from executed prisoners and ensures its secrecy.’ He stated, ‘There is no national public registry for people to voluntarily register their consent to donate their organs after their death…Families are often not notified of the date of the execution until after it is already carried out, making it impossible for them to offer consent for the harvesting of organs. “With the assistance of a translator, Wang Guoqi, a former army doctor and burns specialist at a Chinese People’s Liberation Army hospital, who left the PRC in Spring, 2000,” also testified at the June 28, 2001 U.S. congressional committee hearing: “My work required me to remove skin and corneas from the corpses of over one hundred executed prisoners, and, on a couple of occasions, victims of intentionally botched executions. It is with deep regret and remorse for my actions that I stand here today testifying against the practices of organ and tissue sales from death row prisoners…” Dr. Wang detailed one incident in October, 1995 in Hebei Province that has “tortured” his conscience ever since. He and other burn surgeons were ordered to harvest skin off of the half-dead and convulsing prisoner whose kidneys were immediately extracted after his skin was removed. Then his half-dead corpse was thrown in a plastic bag onto the flatbed of a crematorium truck.3
     In February 1998, Mr. Wu decided to become an undercover agent after he got a tip that Wang Chengyong had approached a dialysis center in New York City with an offer to doctors that he [Wang], for a 25% fee, could arrange for patients to receive a kidney transplant in China without what is often a two-year wait. The physicians, refusing to go along with the deal, put Mr. Chengyong in touch with Mr. Wu, who rigged up a camcorder and posed as the center’s director as part of an FBI sting operation. In a quiet hotel room in midtown Manhattan, Mr. Wu helped the FBI uncover what Chinese activists say is a grisly trade: human organs for cash. In this taped discussion, a straightforward proposition to sell the kidneys, corneas, livers and lungs of executed Chinese prisoners for tens of thousands of dollars, he signed two contracts with Mr. Chengyong, arranging for the organ broker to meet someone he said was a member of the board, actually an FBI agent in disguise. Mr. Wu helped prove in this sting that the Chinese are in fact exchanging human body parts for hard currency. This led the FBI to the arrest of two men: a former Chinese prosecutor named Wang Chengyong, 41, and his accomplice, Fu Xingqi, 35. In this sting, Mr. Wu also substantiated his claims that Chinese authorities confiscate whatever body parts they need after an execution, rarely asking the condemned prisoners or their families for permission beforehand. Mr. Chengyong and his accomplice actually discussed in the sting the methods by which Chinese prisoners are executed, even guaranteeing that any lungs would come from nonsmokers. Mr. Wu also proved that wealthy foreigners, including Americans, often are the transplant recipients of these illegally donated organs, willing to pay from $10,000 to $40,000 for the operation.4 & 5      A doctor from the States, Dr. Thomas Diflo, the director of Renal Transplant Program at New York University Medical Center, testified at the same hearing that he and his colleagues in the New York area provide follow-up care for Chinese-American patients who had returned from China with “freshly” transplanted kidneys from executed prisoners in China “…patients who needed, and deserved, our good care, yet they had obtained their organs under what we considered morally and ethically reprehensible circumstances….” Approximately 90 percent of transplants performed in China use human organs taken from executed prisoners, according to Henry Hyde, the chairman on International Relations, in a press release following a U.S. congressional hearing on June 27, 2001. Some of these prisoners are guilty of minor crimes, such as “counter-revolutionary offenses, a code word for democracy activism… Holiday executions and ’Strike Hard’ campaigns are designed to facilitate organ harvesting of executed prisoners with the payments for transplants funneled to China’s military”. Wang Guioqi, confirmed in his June 28, 2001 testimony corroborating Mr. Hyde’s statements, that “…sales of skin and other human organs to patients in need of transplants and skin grafts netted huge profits for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).”6
     In interviews with about 30 inmates in China, United Nations officials revealed approximately 2,000 to 3,000 organs (mainly kidneys) are obtained from executed prisoners per year. These organs sell for as much as $30,000 for the operation and hospitalization costs. Further revealed was how the backs of the prisoners were slashed immediately following their executions, and their organs rushed to a hospital to be transplanted to patients already prepared for the operation, primarily in military hospitals. Most organs lifted, of course, without the consent of the prisoners or their families.7
     Illegal organ harvesting is not only occurring in China. Revealed in a broadcast by CBS World News on May 10, 2000, a Mexican priest negotiated the sale of a kidney for about $1 million. Aired by a Mexican broadcaster were exclusive scenes of a film he claimed had been made by Antenna 3 in Spain. Two Spanish reporters in one scene, using hidden cameras, posed as potential buyers of organs, and filmed Priest Friar Martin, who agreed to find them a kidney. The film also showed a negotiation between a Santa Fe Hospital doctor in an affluent neighborhood of the Mexican capital apparently agreeing on film to participate in the selling of the kidney, bringing about a agreed upon price of $900,000.8
     As reported by Tim McGirk in “Independent on Sunday” in London, April 2, 1995. “When the police inspector in Bangalore, in southern India, asked the four haggard men in front of him what was wrong, they all lifted their shirts to reveal long, curved scars. ‘Our kidneys have been robbed,’ one of the men told Inspector V.S. D’Souza. The victims were all poor, illiterate villagers who had arrived in Bangalore seeking work. The stories they told were as identical as their scars, a line snaking up from the pelvic region to the back. Promised a laborer’s job, each man had been told to submit to a blood test. In the hospital, he was given an injection that knocked him unconscious. K. Velu, 29, told Sunday, he awoke to find a huge bandage around his waist. ‘I was told that I’d fallen down and had to be operated on,’ Velu said. Back home, Velu went to another hospital. ‘When I insisted that the doctor tell me what was wrong, he said that one of my kidneys had been removed, Velu said. Not only were the four men’s stories the same, but all were allegedly duped out of their organs…It has been estimated that nearly 50 illegal kidney transplants are still carried out every day in India….”9
     Is there a black market for human organs? Yes there is. According to William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International, U.S.A., “an estimated 6,000 prisoners are executed in China each year, and about 90% of transplanted kidneys come from the executed prisoners.”10 The count for China alone. That’s a lot of executions and transplants. And, in most cases, it’s without the prisoners’ consent, and doesn’t afford prisoners incarcerated on death row, unjustifiably, a chance or the time to appeal their cases.
     In my fiction, A Conspiracy to Ponder, that American Book Publishing Company will release this summer, I hope to graphically depict to the entire world how a significant few actually value their lives above all others, and are willing to do anything to sustain their lives. And, as society grows more and more insufficient in the quantity of vital organs that some of us value as priceless, we will, undoubtedly, witness an increase of these cruel and unethical acts in the future to come, not only from men and women, but from countless governments, the very systems we count on for trust and support.

Endnotes
     1. “Paying donors for organs gets put to AMA debate”, by Paul Elias, Chicago Sun-Times, News, Monday, December 3, 2001.
     2. Sale Of Body Parts By People’s Republic of China: David J. Rothman (Congressional Testimony) 6/16/98, News7.
     3. “Organs for Sale: A gruesome human-rights abuse, courtesy of China”, by Ann Noonan, policy director for the Laogai           Foundation, July 6, 2001, 9:00 a.m., Guest Comment on National Review Online.
     4. “Body Parts For Sale: An FBI sting operation uncovers what Chinese activists say is a grisly trade: human organs for cash”,           by Christine Gorman, Medicine, March 9, 1998, vol. 151, no 9, 75th anniversary issue, with reports by Elaine Rivera/New           York and Mia Turner/Beijing.
     5. “World: Asia-Pacific: Executed prisoners’ organs ‘offered for sale’”, BBC News, Tuesday, February 24, 1998 Published at           15:57 GMT.
     6. “Organs for Sale: A gruesome human-rights abuse, courtesy of China”, by Ann Noonan, policy director for the Laogai           Foundation, July 6, 2001, 9:00 a.m., Guest Comment on National Review Online.
     7. China: Prisoners’ organs for sale in world market, by Cesar Chelala, Earth Time News Service, December 28, 1997.
     8. “Body Organs For Sale” (Mexico City, Mexico Organs For Sale – Human organ sales shown in Spanish film), CBS News /           World, Wednesday, May 10, 2000, 11:23:12 EDT.
     9. India’s Rackets by Tim McGirk, “Independent on Sunday (centrist weekly), London, April 2, 1995, printed in the World Press           Review, June 1995, pg. 23.
     10. “Body Parts For Sale: An FBI sting operation uncovers what Chinese activists say is a grisly trade: human organs for           cash”, by Christine Gorman, Medicine, March 9, 1998, vol. 151, no 9, 75th anniversary issue, with reports by Elaine           Rivera/New York and Mia Turner/Beijing.


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