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This is an archive article published on March 25, 2012

No transplant of executed prisoners’ organs

describing the merits of voluntary organ donations by the public. They said Huang Jiefu,the vice minister of health,had told a conference in Hangzhou on Thursday about the plan to stop harvesting organs after executions.

China said on Friday that within three to five years it planned to end the practice of transplanting organs from executed prisoners,a step that would address what for decades has been one of the country’s most criticized human rights issues.

A wide range of official news media outlets ran apparently coordinated articles describing the merits of voluntary organ donations by the public. They said Huang Jiefu,the vice minister of health,had told a conference in Hangzhou on Thursday about the plan to stop harvesting organs after executions.

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

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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.

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