Provisions Issued on Organ Transplants, Fail to Address Executed Prisoners

April 24, 2006

The Ministry of Health released Interim Provisions on Clinical Application and Management of Human Organ Transplantation (in Chinese) on March 27, 2006. The provisions become effective on July 1, 2006, and will introduce a set of medical standards for organ transplants in China.

The Ministry of Health released Interim Provisions on Clinical Application and Management of Human Organ Transplantation (in Chinese) on March 27, 2006. The provisions become effective on July 1, 2006, and will introduce a set of medical standards for organ transplants in China. According to the provisions, medical institutes must have the written consent of the organ donor and must guarantee that organs used in transplants come from legal sources. In addition, the provisions ban the buying and selling of organs, and provide prospective donors with the right to refuse donation. The new rules, however, fail to provide guidance on organs harvested from executed prisoners.

Executed prisoners likely are the source of the majority of organs used in transplant operations in China, according to reported statements from Chinese officials and reports from U.S. human rights organizations. At a July 2005 conference, Vice Minister of Health Huang Jiefu said that the majority of organs used in transplants in China come from executed prisoners, according to a November 28, 2005 article (in Chinese) in Caijing. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang also acknowledged that organs from executed prisoners are used for transplants in China, but only in "a very few cases" and with the express consent of the condemned convicts, according to a March 29, 2006, Agence France-Presse report carried by the South China Morning Post. A 1994 Human Rights Watch report concluded that, "the bodies of executed prisoners are the source for many, in fact most of the organ transplant operations performed in China."

The 1984 Interim Provisions Regarding the Use of Corpses or Organs from Executed Criminals (in Chinese) allow for the extraction of executed prisoners’ organs with the consent of either the prisoner or the prisoner’s family, or if no one claims the prisoner’s body for burial. In June 27, 2001, testimony before a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee hearing, Dr. Wang Guoqi described the involuntary extraction of executed prisoners’ organs while he worked at the "Paramilitary Police General Brigade Hospital" in Tianjin municipality in the 1990s. Dr. Guo testified that, "clearly the prisoners did not know how their bodies would be used after their death." At the same hearing, Harry Wu, Executive Director of the Laogai Research Foundation, provided testimony that detailed some of the coercive measures used to obtain the consent of prisoners to harvest their organs. In addressing the issue of the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners, the U.S. State Department’s 2005 Country Report on Human Rights Practices in China concluded that "serious questions remained concerning whether meaningful or voluntary consent from the prisoners or their relatives was obtained."

The World Health Organization’s guiding principles on human organ transplantation, adopted May 1987, stipulate that, "An organ may be removed from the body of an adult living donor for the purpose of transplantation if the donor gives free consent. The donor should be free of any undue influence and pressure and sufficiently informed to be able to understand and weigh the risks, benefits, and consequences of consent." The guiding principles allow for the removal of organs from the bodies of deceased persons if legal consent has been obtained and if there is no reason to believe that the deceased person would have objected to the removal. The principles do not address specifically, however, the removal of organs from executed prisoners.

For more information on the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners, see information on Capital Punishment in Section III(b) of the CECC's 2005 Annual Report.