Missouri and Pennsylvania Take Steps Against Forced Organ Harvesting

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On April 25, 2017, the Houses of Pennsylvania and Missouri adopted resolutions calling for open investigations into China’s practice of forcibly harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience.

The Pennsylvania resolution mentions the whistleblower Wang Guoqi, a former Chinese doctor who confirmed that Chinese prisoners of conscience are systematically tested for organ match while in custody, and killed for transplants. Medical tourists from Asia and around the world pay enormous sums for these procurements, which happen without their knowledge. According to eye-witnesses, doctors perform the extractions on-demand to ensure the freshness and viability of the organs, often without anesthesia—not, as is often mis-reported, from executed prisoners.

Practitioners of the banned meditation practice Falun Gong are the top targets for organ harvesting, as great numbers of them are incarcerated for persisting in their beliefs in the practice’s principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. The Chinese Communist Party has, since 1999, created a sophisticated extra-judicial system to eradicate Falun Gong. Tens of thousands have been imprisoned; thousands have been confirmed dead due to torture or organ harvesting.

The evidence for forced organ harvesting has been overwhelming since Canadian researchers began investigations in 2005. Recently, China’s former Vice Minister of Health said in a speech at the Vatican that more than 90% of transplant organs in China come from executed prisoners, a number which his government claims is dwindling even as the number of transplants grow.

Both Houses call on the medical community to help raise awareness of these crimes and to ban the entry of persons involved in forced organ harvesting. Both Pennsylvania and Missouri are home to sizable and esteemed transplant centers and transplant professionals.

The Missouri resolution makes the additional motion to “initiate a registry for residents of Missouri who travel abroad to receive organ transplants.”

As more states and local governments sound off on China’s inhumane practices, pressure grows to open an official, international investigation and to bring its perpetrators to justice.

 

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