Channel 10 of China Central Television Unwittingly Exposes Details about the Live Organ Harvesting Situation

China's Central Television's (CCTV) Science and Education Channel 10 aired an actual organ transplant segment in a TV program entitled, "Life and Death Reversal" on May 26th and 27th, 2006, from 8:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. This TV program was a part of the Walking into Science series, which consisted of Part A and Part B. I watched most of the program. On the surface, the program looked spectacular and dandy. Its content is briefly described as follows:

Mr. Song Yongle, a heart disease patient from Beijing, and Ms. Ren Meifen, a patient with a breathing problem due to a dysfunctional lung, were facing the possibility of imminent death because of their long-term illnesses. They needed organ transplant surgery. They had searched the nationwide, Mainland China internal hospital network looking for matching organs. Blood type matching found a so-called organ donor in Dalian City whose heart and lung were available for both patients at the same time. In February 2005 it was decided that the patients would undergo organ transplant surgery in the Xinhua Hospital affiliated with Dalian University. Ren Meifen's surgery would consist of a double-lobe lung transplant. The surgery date was scheduled for March 5th, 2005.

According to the TV segment, at 7:00 a.m. on March 5th the organ removal from the donor began (the TV program did not mention the location). At 7:55 a.m., the heart and lung were removed, then placed into a container and sent to the Xinhua Hospital where the doctors separated the heart and the lung. The separation was finished at 9:15 am. The organ transplant surgery then started. Before 11:00 a.m., the operation for Song Yongle's surgery had been completed. By 1:48 p.m., the surgery for Ren Meifen was completed. One year later, both the patients health was still normal.

After the almost one-hour-long program, the program host only casually said at the end of the program, "Thank you to the unselfish organ donor." Nothing in the program mentioned anything of a personal nature about the organ donor and the donation process.

Several suspicious points around the surgery:

1. The surgery time was preset too precisely and the quality of the donated organs was too high

It was decided that Beijing patient Song Yongle would go to Dalian City to undergo the surgery in February 2005. The suspicious point is that that Xinhua Hospital affiliated with Dalian University had in February quickly set the transplant surgery date for March 5th. The aired program mentioned that the time elapsed from the moment of the donor's brain death to the removal of the heart and lung was no more than six minutes. The donor's organ removal surgery started at 7:00 a.m. and finished at 7:55 a.m. on March 5th, which means the donor must have been alive during the period of 55 minutes.

The TV program mentioned that following the organ transplant surgeries, the two patients' condition was normal. When the heart was transplanted into Song's body, once it was connected to the main artery, it started to function without the need of taking other auxiliary measures. The two lung lobes for Ren Meifen were large in size; so, after the cutting and the transplant, the lungs could still function normally. Three days later she was removed from the respirator, and she could breathe on her own. The two patients' post-surgery conditions illustrated two issues: a) The large size of the lung showed that the donor could be a male; b) How the heart and lungs had functioned after the transplant surgery showed that the donor had enjoyed very good health.

Outside China there is usually no way to pre-determine the time for a heart or lung transplant. How could a donor, when he or she still lives normally, have his or her heart or lung removed? Outside China donor organs can only be removed when the donor has agreed on the organ removal before he or she falls into a coma due to an illness, or due to a sudden fatal bodily injury, and after the doctors further determined that the donor indeed is beyond recovery.

Under conventional social conditions, the doctor has no way to accurately know the donor's time of death, pinpoint so many days ahead of the donor's actual death, and further snatch the time to remove a heart and lung before the donor has actually died. Therefore, the assumption that a sudden car accident, sudden brain illness or other sudden factors had caused the donor to suddenly become gravely ill did not exist. The surgery time was already scheduled to be March 5th as early as in February, while the blood type matching work was done even before February (I do not remember the actual time). How could the sole, pre-chosen organ donor just happened to have an accident on March 4th and was just about to die next morning, waiting to have his or her organ removed? How could such coincidences have ever happened?

For a person who has been ill or who has taken medicine for treatment for a long time, his or her organs during a lengthy period of medical drug treatment could no way be that healthy. Usually for such a person, because of the side effects of taking drugs for treatment or his or her otherwise poor health, that person's organs would show, to different degrees, dysfunction and illnesses and are hardly suitable for organ transplants. There are strict requirements for the organs to be used for transplants; they have to meet every aspect of the requirements, they can't have even a slight difference. The organs from a person who looks healthy may also not be suited for organ transplant surgery because they may not meet the specified standards, not to mention an organ from a patient who is about to die.

The Xinhua Hospital doctors did not only preset the surgery time so early (setting a precise date), but also went ahead with the surgery without any delay. This arrangement also ensured that the donor was still alive at the time of the surgery, and the organs were of very good quality. All this information shows that the organ donor for this surgery was alive at the time of the surgery; and he he had enjoyed good health and lived very well before his organs were removed. It is clear that others must have applied forceful measures on him to arbitrarily remove his organs. How could such a healthy person have given permission to have any of his organs removed, particularly the heart and lungs? Wouldn't that be the same as murder? Furthermore, the donor's information had already been collected and archived. There wouldn't have been enough time and it wouldn't be possible even for the hospital to match blood type by simply dragging a person in off the street. Even so, had there been a volunteer whose blood type matched those of the patients, a volunteer who still enjoys a good a health would in no way go and die at the doctor's required time so as to donate his organs to the patients. As the donor's blood type did match the patients' it was impossible to just have one matching, living donor; there must be a pool of living donors for matching, to be chosen from. Any individual from this pool, once his or her blood type matches the patients' could be used as an organ donor. This also illustrated the fact that there were many living donors in Dalian region then, whose blood samples could be used at any time for matching; as long as the match was made, their organs could be removed at any time.

2. The donor's identity is un-known

No mention was made during the whole TV program of any information about the organ donor and the donation process. In normal situations, if the donor is a healthy inmate who is on death row, after the execution order is issued, the doctors can only proceed with organ removal under the condition that they have already gotten the donor's consent and when the donor is anaesthetised and cannot feel any pain. Additionally, the organs may be removed from those individuals who have healthy organs and are in a permanent coma (e.g., those who are in a vegetative state) or who, because of an accident (e.g., a car accident), have been unconscious for some time, are determined to be unable to recover from the coma, are about to die and have, in the past, signed agreements to donate their organs, and whose family members have approved the organ removal (this last point in very important).

In the above situations, the donors are indeed healthy and the organ transplant/removal time can also be precisely set; however, these situations are in reality extremely rare. If the organ removal were done in accord with the above conditions, the hospital could have publicised the donors' information in a way to honour the donor for his or her humanitarian spirit, so as to encourage others to follow his or her example. How come such information was not mentioned?

Any producer who has some experience in making TV programs can in no way overlook such an issue, not to mention the CCTV, an expert in arousing people's "emotions." The CCTV would in no way let such an opportunity slip away. Let's take a step back: even if the donor's family members did not agree to publicise the donation, the TV program could still mention the donation process without revealing the donor's personal information, for the benefit of those might who have the wish to donate their organs.

The producer of this TV program was always skirting the issue, never saying a word that would specify anything relating to donor information or the donation process. The production knowingly eluded the topic. The whole program had stressed the hard-working doctors and the difficulties and surgery risks, so as to attract the audience and divert their attention somewhere else. Anyone having some experience in this area, however, will raise questions and doubts about this TV program. The program producer's elusive way of making the program has in itself shown that there are questionable issues about the donor's origin.

3. Question regarding the place of removing organs

The Xinhua Hospital absolutely has the ability to carry out the organ removal. Moreover, on-site organ removal may save transplant surgery time. As related in the TV program, though, the donor organ removal was not carried out in the Xinhua Hospital, but in some unspecified place not revealed in the program; only the removal time is mentioned. On March 5th, the organ removal was finished at 7: 55 a.m. The organs were packaged and delivered to Xinhua Hospital within a short period of time, indicating that the secret organ harvesting place must be inside Dalian City. According to my knowledge, there is a large-scale underground prison facility in Dalian's Liberation Square region. The majority of inmates are political prisoners. I suspect that there to be a secret place right in Dalian City to imprison dissidents and Falun Gong practitioners, which at the present has become a living human organ donor bank.

4. Behind the story of nationwide networking to search for donors

For this surgery, they matched the blood types in the nationwide hospital system to search for heart and lung donors. This indicates the existence of live organ donor banks throughout China that may supply organs for transplant at any time. In addition, they keep in mutual contact. According to the surgery needs, one area may use organs from another area at any time. As said in the program, "they mutually supplement and mutually benefit."

These live organs were surgically removed after applying local anaesthesia when the donor was alive. The method is cruel; even a prisoner on death row should not be treated this way. How could this possibly be done on a living person? The doctors who performed this surgery are really beasts. From the perspective of law, doctors have the duty to save people's lives. In malpractice cases, doctors are investigated for legal liability. Doctors have no authority to carry out the death penalty on any person.

Most patients' family members, being anxious to rescue their loved ones, do not seriously question the source of the organs. They deceive themselves and others. Some people clearly know the fact of the matter, but they consciously go along with the evil practice.

Hospitals in various places in Mainland China collude with the wicked people controlling the live donor banks to secretly harvest organs from living humans for what amounts to blood money. They have established an evil and secret production and marketing system with staggering profits, which includes living specimen collection, organ harvesting and organ sales. They have been quietly carrying out the worst, most despicable dealings on a national scale.

* * * * * * * * *

All the questionable points above showed that, after the wicked, illegal organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners for organ transplant was exposed, those involved in the practice have promoted many TV documentaries of this kind in order to deceive the public and mislead people, to make them readily believe that they are doing legitimate organ harvesting and transplants.

Nonetheless, all these are futile efforts, because what they do is so mean and contemptible that it cannot withstand deliberation. Regardless of how they are trying to vindicate themselves, it is actually exposing their own evil deeds.

Key participants in this surgery:

Wang Jiangning (male), head of the hospital
Lu Shuliang (male), physician-in-charge of heart transplant
Xu Ning (male), physician-in-charge of a double lung transplant
Other main officials at the Xinhua Hospital:
Wang Zhijun, male, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) member, Xinhua Hospital CCP committee member, vice president, discipline inspection committee secretary; professor, to be appointed to the post of Xinhua Hospital CCP committee secretary.
Yu Xiaoqing, female, CCP member, Xinhua Hospital CCP committee member, the party management office director, senior officer of political affairs; to be appointed to the post of Xinhua Hospital CCP committee deputy secretary.
Xinhua Hospital address:
156 Wansui St., Shahekou District, Dalian City, Liaoning Province
Telephone: 86-411-82182126
Fax: 86-411-84311728
Email: [email protected]

Attachment: A brief introduction to the Xinhua Hospital (Group) Affiliated With Dalian University (Directly taken from Internet without any word alteration; only deleted unnecessary paragraphs)

The Hospital Affiliated With Dalian University is an accredited comprehensive hospital of Triple A Grade with tremendous growth potential and solid technical background. The hospital combines medical, scientific research and teaching. It has 900 open beds, 44 clinical sections, 13 scientific research labs, 16 clinical teaching labs. There are 185 people with advanced degrees, 85 people with Ph.D. and Master's degrees. Eleven people receive subsidies from the State Department and the city government; two people are vice presidents of state-level professional academic committees; four people are presidents and vice presidents of province-level committees, and more than ten people are members of various academic committees. Eleven people are editors, and one person is the sub-editor-in-chief at the core state-level academic magazines. The Department of Gastro-enterology is a city-level key medical discipline, and the Department of Cosmetology and Microsurgery is a newly popular key discipline. Outstanding experts and scholars from inside and outside the province gather at this department, which has been approved as the Cosmetology Center at Dalian University and the Northeast Training Center for the Chinese Society of Aesthetic and Plastic Surgery Doctors.

The Oncology Department, Department of Thoracic Surgery, Department of Cerebral Surgery, Department of Urology, among others, have formed a group of winning academic sections with outstanding and unique qualities. At the same time a large and powerful team of experts gathers and provides a reliable guarantee for the patients. In January 2005, the Department of Cardiac Surgery and the Department of Thoracic Surgery carried out the first heart transplant and lung transplant in our city, which were [both] successful. So far we have completed six heart transplants and four lung transplants (among which two cases are of double lung transplants), and two liver transplants.

The hospital emphasizes scientific advancements and has taken on 26 state-level and province-level research projects (subjects). [We have] won eight awards of various types and published more than 400 scientific articles in the past three years, obtained three patents and created 125 new technologies and projects, which fills the void in the province, the city and the hospital.

The hospital shoulders two levels, eight majors, 39 classes, or 2,200 credit hours of teaching responsibilities [for students] from the Medical College of Dalian University and from the Sports Institute. The hospital also shoulders the practice responsibilities for six majors from the Medical College of Dalian University and for one graduating class of the Sports Institute. Each year, 105 teachers participate the teaching work, and the rate of theoretic classes taught by teachers with high professional titles is greater than 85% . Clinical practice is all taught and guided by the teachers with rich clinical experiences with intermediate titles and above. In 2001, the hospital was awarded the title "qualified affiliated hospital" from the provincial Health Bureau and Education Bureau.