No transplant of executed prisoners’ organs

“The pledge to abolish organ donations from condemned prisoners represents the resolve of the government,” he said,according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Huang did not acknowledge any ethical issues involved in taking organs from prisoners. Instead,he raised a medical issue,saying that the rates of fungal and bacterial infection in organs taken from executed inmates were high,which he said explained why the long-term survival rates of organ transplant recipients in China were consistently below those of other countries.

Nicholas Bequelin,a researcher in Hong Kong for Human Rights Watch,welcomed the announcement,which the rights group has campaigned for since 1994. But he noted that Huang,who turns 66 this year,is about to retire,along with most of the China’s top leadership.

That means the next generation of leaders and Health Ministry officials will have to deal with the problem of how to obtain enough organ donations voluntarily to offset the heavy dependence on prisoners. “It’s not clear to me the government is going to have the political will to fulfill this promise,” Bequelin said.