Chinese Organ-Harvesting Death Toll ‘Large, Hidden’: Researchers

The authors of a recent academic article proving that Chinese surgeons executed prisoners by removing their organs suggested that the abuses are ongoing — and that they're taking place at a much larger scale than researchers can document.

In an article published in April, the researchers found 71 instances in which official reports document execution by organ harvesting in China. The authors, Jacob Laveee, the director of heart transplantation at Tel Aviv's Sheba Medical Center, and Matthew Robertson, a fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, used an analysis of close to 125,000 Chinese medical-research papers to come to that conclusion.

The 71 instances of execution by organ harvesting they found are likely “a tiny portion of a large, hidden population,” they wrote today in a piece for the Wall Street Journal, adding that, “Thousands of papers have been published in China about heart and lung transplantation, but most say nothing about how the donor was handled.”

In addition, they argued that organ harvesting executions likely continue to take place today, even though the period they studied ended in 2015.

“Medical papers like those we studied were first unearthed by Chinese grass-roots investigators in late 2014, and it would have been simple to command journals to stop publishing the incriminating details after that,” they added, citing other research.

Lavee and Robertson believe that international outrage about these gruesome practices is restrained in part by China's partnership with the World Health Organization.

WHO experts, they wrote, “took advice from Chinese transplant surgeons” to establish a task force on organ trafficking — then installed them on the committee. The WHO also attacked their previous research on forced organ harvesting.

They also argued that it's difficult to shock people nowadays: “Comparisons to the medical atrocities of the Nazis haven't galvanized a response, perhaps having lost all potency due to overuse.”

But the nature and extent of these practices, as already documented by researchers, are shocking.

Earlier this month, another expert, Ethan Gutmann, told a congressional panel that his research indicates that there is widespread organ harvesting within the Chinese government's Xinjiang prison camps.

The Chinese authorities, Gutmann said, carry out forced organ harvesting surgeries on tens of thousands of victims. He added that one of the facilities where those operations take place is located close to a crematorium.