The volume of transplants went up dramatically after 2000 which coincides with the detentions of Falun Gong practitioners, “yet there were no signs that the number of persons sentenced to death and then executed did actually increase,” writes Kilgour (with Jan Harvey).“The recorded number of organ transplants far exceeded the sum total of voluntary organ donation and all death penalty prisoners in China each year,” Kilgour (with Harvey) concludes in State Organs.
Kilgour often says in his public appearances that there are 52 verifiable pieces of evidence that demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that live organ harvesting occurred and is occurring, and that the bulk of the organs derive from Falun Gong practitioners. Trey estimates there are 10,000 to 20,000 transplants annually in China. Not all the executed prisoners would be eligible for organ donation: blood type, tissue match, state of organs, and age. In order to have enough suitable organs on hand at any one time, many more than 10,000 to 20,000 prisoners would have to be in the organ pool to make possible that number of transplantations.
The inevitable conclusion reached by Trey, Kilgour, and Matas is that there must be another group of organ donors, who are standing by as a living source of organs to be harvested when needed.
Gutmann’s research found that organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners started in the latter half of 2000. Not until autumn 2002 did harvesting occur on a “mass scale.” Adding to the pool are an unknown number Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Eastern Lightning House Church Christians.
But these groups were not detained in the same numbers as Falun Gong practitioners who “remain the most plausible source for the bulk of transplants in China,” says Matas.
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Execution on Demand
What about the ethics of using legitimate prisoners—murderers and rapists—sentenced to death as organ donors? Can prisoners ever freely give their consent?
Over the years that transplantation medicine has existed since its infancy in the 1960s, an ethical standard has evolved that organ donors must give their consent, says Arthur Caplan, Ph.D., in State Organs. Part of the reason is the idea that the body itself should not be made the object of commerce.
Caplan is head of the Division of Bioethics at New York University Langone Medical Center in NYC.
Caplan argues that the ability of an individual to give consent is what makes removal of an organ from a living person ethically legitimate. To protect against anyone being trafficked, every transplant team needs to verify that the person voluntarily gave the organ up.
Caplan says that consent by a prisoner can never be truly voluntary.
If you go to China to get a liver transplant, for example, that means an execution is going to have to be scheduled. “They will need to find a healthy prisoner with the right blood type and tissue type and the right size liver and that prisoner ready to harvest before the transplant tourist needs to leave,” Caplan wrote.
The above procedure is executing someone on demand and for profit and is unprecedented and unethical. It is all the more so for those who are in prison for political or spiritual beliefs, Caplan wrote.
Gutmann writes in State Organs, “What ties the Falun Gong harvesting atrocity to the genocide of the Holocaust (and very nearly to Unit 731 [a unit of the Japanese Army that carried out lethal human experimentation in biological and chemical warfare]) is that it required the employment of the most venerated members of society, the doctors, to carry it out.”
Anecdotal Evidence
Throughout the book are anecdotal stories that confirm the fearful conclusions reached from analysis of the data.
There is the account of a former prisoner that Matas interviewed named “L,” who witnessed “barbaric” execution practices to organ harvest. The money was split 50-50 between a nearby hospital and the prison guards.
“L” told the details of prepping for organ harvesting of a Falun Gong practitioner. The practitioner was seen with a needle in his neck. A white hospital ambulance van was waiting. His cell leader told “L” that the practitioner had been organ harvested.
Dr. Trey met a practitioner who during the two years of his detention was blood tested 10 times.
“Why would detained Falun Gong practitioners receive specific physical examinations (including x-rays, ultra-sound, blood tests) while at the same time being subjected to brainwashing, labor work, [and torture.]” wrote Trey. “The medical examinations were certainly not aiming for the health benefit of the victims.”
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