The issue first came to light in March 2006, when a woman claimed that as many as 4,000 Falun Gong practitioners had been killed for their organs at the hospital where she worked. Her husband, a surgeon at the same hospital outside the city of Shenyang in Northeast China, had disclosed to her that he had removed corneas from the living bodies of more than 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners between 2000 and 2001.¹

In response, David Kilgour and David Matas launched an independent investigation. After months of research, including undercover interviews with doctors throughout 12 provinces in China, they came to “the regrettable conclusion that the allegations are true.” Kilgour and Matas later compiled their findings in the book Bloody Harvest.²

Starting at around the same time, investigative journalist Ethan Gutmann spent seven years doing his own research. He reached similar conclusions in his book The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China’s Secret Solution to Its Dissident Problem.³

Over the past decade, we investigated hundreds of transplant hospitals in China, uncovered and summarized huge quantities of data, as well as relevant policy directives that affect the growth of the transplant industry in China. Drawing upon media reports, official statements, medical journals, hospital websites, and web archives, we found that China’s transplant industry had become the most prolific in the world in just a few years despite the lack of an effective organ donation system.^{4 5 6 7} Furthermore, the industry continued to grow after live organ harvesting gained international attention in 2006.⁸

“Across China, a gruesome trade in human organs is taking place on a mass scale. Like something out of a horror movie, livers, kidneys, hearts, lungs, and corneas are being cut out from prisoners of conscience while they are still alive. If anything proves the meaning of the term ‘crime against humanity,’ it is this bloody, ghoulish practice.”

—Benedict Rogers, Deputy Chair of the U.K. Conservative Party Human Rights Commission

References