China Solves Organ Donation Problem As Only They Can

The Chinese government has apparently solved the conundrum of having more people in need of organ transplants than they have willing donors.

They're using death row inmates.

The majority of transplanted organs in China come from executed prisoners, state media reported Wednesday in a rare disclosure about an industry often criticized for being opaque and unethical.

The country's Health Ministry and the Red Cross Society of China this week launched a national organ donation system to reduce the reliance on death row inmates and encourage donations from the public, the China Daily newspaper reported.

Condemned prisoners are "definitely not a proper source for organ transplants," the report quoted Vice Health Minister Huang Jiefu as saying. He has publicly acknowledged that most transplant organs are taken from executed prisoners, but only with prior consent.

Foreign medical and human rights groups have long criticized China's organ transplant trade as being opaque, profit-driven and unethical. Critics say death row prisoners may feel compelled to become donors.

Voluntary donations in China remain far below demand, partly because of cultural bias against organ removal before burial. About 1.5 million people in China need transplants, but only some 10,000 operations are performed annually, Chinese health officials say.

China has acknowledged that kidneys, livers, corneas and other organs are routinely removed from prisoners sentenced to death, but gave no details. Chinese transplant specialists estimate at least 90 percent of transplanted organs come from executed prisoners, human rights groups say.

This is not unlike the situation exposed when the Bodies Exhibition began its run in the US. The exhibit is an anatomic exhibition, where internal organs are visible and preserved using plasticizers, but the source of those bodies was questioned. The bodies were from China, and while Chinese authorities claimed that these were people who donated their bodies to science, there's no actual proof and the Chinese official involved in the transaction to bring those bodies to exhibit have participated in use of executed prisoners for commercial purposes.