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4 Hearts in 10 Days: China’s ‘On Demand’ Organ Bank Raises Concerns of Forced Harvesting

Recently, The Epoch Times reported a few “unbelievable” organ transplants in China.

Sun Lingling, a 24-year-old Chinese national, fell ill in Japan with a rare autoimmune disease that led to irreversible heart damage. In mid-June, her medical team flew her to China’s Wuhan Union Hospital on a chartered flight. The Chinese doctors gathered four matching hearts in the course of 10 days and used the last one to conduct the surgery. Sun recovered and was able to eat on her own.

Chinese newspapers reported Sun’s story with dramatic headlines, such as “A life or death race.” The Chinese embassy in Japan, which arranged Sun’s transportation to Wuhan, called the surgery “legendary” and touted it as a show of China-Japan friendship and cooperation.

Sun’s first matching heart came on June 16 from Wuhan, but doctors found the health condition not up to par and gave it up. The second heart came from nearby Hunan Province three days later, but Sun developed a high fever by then and could not have the surgery. On June 25, doctors got two more hearts: one from a female in Wuhan, and another one from a male in Guangzhou Province. The Chinese media report said they chose the latter because it had “better heart functions.”

The willingness to donate an organ is low among Chinese. Even in a country with a large base of those willing to donate, receiving four matching heats in 10 days is unusual. A professor at the Surgery and Heart Transplantation Department, Tel Aviv University, Israel, said Sun’s case is “beyond explanation.” “Rather, it follows an ‘on demand system.’”

There are more of these “unbelievable” cases.

China has also performed at least six double-lung transplants on COVID-19 patients since late February, at least two of which took place in Wuhan. The donors of both lungs, of course, could not survive. Chinese hospitals gave little information about where the organs came from.

In his book Bloody Harvest, David Kilgour, a former Canadian lawyer and member of the Canadian parliament, cited a Taiwanese organ tourist who was provided with eight kidneys during his two separate trips to Shanghai over the course of eight months—until his body accepted the final one.

There have been investigations including from the U.S. Congress and the E.U. Parliament indicating that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has conducted forced organ harvesting, removing vital organs from prisoners of conscience who were still alive, and then selling these organs for profit.

In June 2019, the London-based independent People’s Tribunal concluded “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the Chinese regime was targeting prisoners of conscience for their organs. The main source of organs was practitioners of Falun Gong who the CCP has persecuted severely for the past two decades.

Such practices are indicative of a transplant industry that “has a large pool, or stable, of political and religious prisoners that are already tissue-typed for transplant,” said Ethan Gutmann, a China analyst who authored the book “The Slaughter” about China’s illicit organ trade. He said Sun’s case exemplified the problems with the country’s transplant industry.

Source: The Epoch Times, August 11, 2020
https://www.theepochtimes.com/4-hearts-in-10-days-chinas-on-demand-organ-bank-raises-concerns-of-forced-harvesting_3457910.html