Participants at a conference on organ trafficking at the Vatican have confronted China over its organ transplant practices.
China’s former vice-minister of health Dr. Huang Jiefu made a presentation at the conference,
but ended up in a heated exchange with doctors over China’s program to harvest organs from executed prisoners.
Huang Jiefu promised to end the use of such organs in 2012, then again in 2013, and now claims China stopped such organ harvesting in 2015.
But independent investigation by researchers David Kilgour, David Matas and Ethan Gutmann shows that the practice is still going on.
Many of the victims are not prisoners convicted of crimes but prisoners of conscience.
They include house Christians, Tibetans and Uyghurs.
The vast majority of victims are adherents of Falun Gong – a peaceful spiritual practice.
The Italian Senate just passed a law in January condemning organ harvesting.