Chinese Sell Human Organs on the Internet

Source: London Electronic Telegraph

Date: October 27, 2000

Chinese Sell Human Organs on the Internet Beijing -- China's shadowy trade in human organs has moved onto the internet, where healthy but impoverished Chinese have begun offering to sell body parts through a network of middle-men. The web-based trade was exposed by a newspaper from the wealthy southern province of Guangdong. Yesterday, the Public Health Ministry refused to comment on reports that it is drafting a law to ban the trade in human organs and legalise organ donation, both at present in a grey area of Chinese law. To date, most outside attention has focused on the alleged sale of organs from freshly executed Chinese criminals. China has always denied such sales, saying all donations are "voluntary". But clinics have long been accused of offering prisoners' organs for sale to wealthy overseas patients, most of them from Asia. The Yangcheng Evening News found advertisments on Chinese-language web sites offering "a kidney from a living human body" and bone marrow. Another donor wrote: "Cornea from healthy person with sight - urgent sale due to poverty". Earlier this year, undercover reporters from Hong Kong were offered livers from "good, young" executed criminals at the Sun Yat-sen University Hospital in Guangzhou. Doctors urged the investigators to book an organ quickly, to take advantage of an execution campaign then under way. Dr He Xiaoshun, a surgeon from the same hospital, said this week that there were individuals willing to sell their organs. He said the trade appeared to be organized by middle-men posing as relatives or friends.