NTD Television

US transplant surgeons say there needs to be more awareness about transplant abuse inside China.

Medical rights group, Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, hosted a forum on Thursday at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. They presented findings on state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting in China.

[Dana Churchill, Delegate, Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting]
“Ethan Gutmann, a journalist and an award winning author estimates that more than 65,000 Falun Gong practitioners have been murdered for their organs by the Chinese Communist Party.”

Falun Gong is a Chinese spiritual practice. Since 1999, the communist regime has waged a persecution campaign against its practitioners. In 2006, claims surfaced that practitioners detained in prison and labor camps are being killed for their organs.

Former Canadian lawmaker David Kilgour, and Canadian lawyer David Matas were the first to carry out an in-depth investigation into the claims. They found a big discrepancy between the sudden increase in transplants in China since 1999, and the lack of official explanation for where those organs came from. They concluded that Chinese state-run hospitals were in fact using Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience as a source of organs.

[Christopher Hughes, MD, Director, Liver Transplant Surgery, UPMC]
“Well it’s like Mr. Matas said, the numbers don’t add up, somewhere these organs are coming from, and they need to be accounted for, and I think the international community needs to understand where those organs are coming from.”

The Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute at UPMC is at the forefront of the organ transplant industry. It provides training for surgeons from around the world, including China.

[Nicholas Solic, Former Employee, Allegheny County Health Department, PA]
“There’s gotta be common knowledge that a lot of surgeons that they are training, or the training they’re providing both here and in China, has to be associated with this [organ harvesting].”

Dr. Christopher Hughes says the UPMC will be discussing how to deal with visiting surgeons from China.

[Henkie P. Tan, Transplant Doctor, Pittsburgh University]
“Everybody, any transplant position, any transplant personnel is against this. This should never happen, we’re surprised that it’s happening, there’s no doubt about it, it just shouldn’t happen. It needs to stop.”

The Chinese regime openly admits to using executed prisoners as a source of organs, but has denied using prisoners of conscience. The regime, however, has so far not refuted the specific evidence raised in the reports by Kilgour and Matas

Original article