The Australian National University study examined thousands of medical documents from China and revealed the country’s illegal organ collection trade. At present, the collection of organs from executed prisoners is legal in China. However, this new research claims that the detainees underwent surgery while they were still alive. Human rights activists say the figures “tell a terrible story of killings and mutilations in China” and the stories coming from the country are “almost too scary to believe”. The role of the study, which was published in the American Journal of Transplantation, was to determine if an inmate had been classified as “brain dead” before his organs were removed for harvesting. In 71 cases, “brain death could not be declared,” according to Chinese transplant records. Matthew Robertson, a PHD researcher and co-author of the report, said: “In these cases, the removal of the heart during organ procurement must have been the immediate cause of the donor’s death.” “Because these organ donors could only be prisoners, our findings strongly suggest that doctors in the People’s Republic of China were involved in executions by removing organs,” he added. The surgeries were performed on death row inmates as well as prisoners of conscience – people who are incarcerated for who they are or for what they believe, he has claimed. Mr. Robertson and co-author Jacob Lavee, a heart surgeon, believe the actual number of surgical deaths is much higher. They claim that the practice, which China has denied it has been carrying out, has been going on for three decades, with other organs such as the liver and kidneys believed to have been removed. While waiting times for organ transplants in countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States are measured in months and years, waiting times in China are a matter of weeks.
