More than 60 French lawmakers have once again raised questions about the possible risk of organ harvesting from death row inmates in China, despite the fact that since 2015 China has officially banned it by decree.
Le Monde reports that there are still many gray areas in China’s brutal repressive system, including the removal of organs from prisoners without prior consent. Despite Beijing’s ban, the availability of spare human organs and the rapidity with which transplants are performed in China’s public and private hospitals breaks all records and must be questioned.
NGOs working on human rights in China have been cautious about this because of the difficulty of obtaining records. There has long been a problem of transparency in China’s organ transplant industry, as the country has a long history of using prisoners’ organs, especially from death row inmates, and official statements from the authorities are difficult to verify, said Luo Zhihua, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for East and Southeast Asia.
First, data on the number of prisoners on death row in China is kept secret; NGOs estimate, based on publicly available information, that about 1,000 people are executed in China each year. In addition, the banned Falun Gong group in China has for years exposed the problem of organ harvesting by Beijing authorities from its imprisoned students, and the massive persecution, mass incarceration, and imprisonment of the Uighur people have led NGOs to fear that they may be targeted for organ harvesting.
More than sixty French parliamentarians believe that despite the uncertainty, a high degree of vigilance is necessary. On September 15, they submitted a bill that would help increase transparency in scientific cooperation between Chinese and French health institutions. In response to a question from French MP Dumas, the Chief of Staff of the French Presidency, Stézoda, responded in a letter dated August 24. The bill was brought to the attention of Health Minister Weyland, who was asked about it by Le Monde.
When Le Monde asked Health Minister Verlaine about the bill, his office said that the minister attached great importance to the bill, but stressed that France did not need new legislation. This statement by the Minister of Health infuriated the Dumas senator: what tools does France have to evaluate or sanction the bill? At present there are only good intentions. If there is no ability to verify what Chinese hospitals are doing, then the precautionary principle must be followed, otherwise what good is the ethical principle?
In 2019, the results of a survey conducted by the French Biomedical Agency of 190 dialysis and transplant centers showed that 24 of the transplants were performed abroad. The only French person to benefit from a transplant in China was in 2004, but the fact remains that French and Chinese medical cooperation goes far beyond this area, with medical training, hosting of interns, and joint research between the two hospitals.
Weber, director of international relations at the Hôpital Publique de Paris, said that in the 2010s, under the leadership of the French Ministry of Health, a partnership was formed between Chinese and French health institutions to support the Chinese health care reform initiated by Chinese Health Minister Chen Zhu, who was considered pro-French.
In 2015, China passed a law banning the removal of organs from prisoners, but we are still vigilant on this issue. In any case, Chinese hospitals can say all they want to say to us, and there is simply no way for us to check and verify it.”
There are also significant differences between Chinese and French laws relating to the donation of human organs, with a lack of organ sources in France and an average waiting time of about three years for a transplant, so much so that 15-30% of patients die before they can be transplanted. The opposite is true in China, where the harvesting of human organs is the industrial equivalent of a very profitable business. “In the 146 Chinese hospitals that the Ministry of Health has confirmed as being ready for organ transplantation,” the average waiting time for an organ transplant is only about 12 days. This is why there are doubts about the origin of the donated organs and the donor’s true intentions.
In the absence of any specific mechanism available to France and the EU to allow sanctions against governments that cover up organ trafficking, French parliamentarians want to focus attention on scientific cooperation between French and Chinese health institutions.Since 2019, the EU has had a clear understanding of its strategic interests vis-à-vis China, but this has not yet translated into medical ethics.
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