Report: China Selling Organs From Condemned Prisoners

NEW YORK, May 2, 01 (CWNews.com) - A New York transplant doctor has become the first American physician to discuss a practice that he believes is becoming more common: US patients are traveling to Asia and paying $10,000 or more to receive a transplanted organ harvested from executed prisoners in China. Dr. Thomas Diflo revealed his concerns in an interview with the Village Voice newspaper this week.

Diflo, director of the renal transplant program at the New York University Medical Center, told the newspaper he has seen half a dozen patients in his clinic who admitted to receiving transplants from Chinese executed prisoners--some of whom were convicted for minor offenses. He said he has taken his concerns to the medical center's ethics committee.

"To tell you the truth, the original rationale for bringing this situation to the ethics committee was my own discomfort in taking care of these patients. I was outraged at the way in which they obtained their organs, and I had a great deal of difficulty separating that fact from the care of the patient," Diflo told the Voice.

"Several patients were very up-front and candid about it, that they bought an organ taken from an executed convict for about $10,000," Diflo recalled. "Most of the patients are ecstatic to be off of dialysis, and none has seemed particularly perturbed regarding the source of the organs."

The sale of organs is a felony in the US under a 1984 law and is punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $50,000. Prisoners in the US, regular or condemned, are forbidden from even donating organs, except to family members under specific circumstances. The newspaper quotes human rights organizations as saying the Federal Bureau of Investigation is working to find and prosecute organ brokers.

Catholic World News Service - Daily News Briefs
2. mai 2001