Bookmarkers beware: Bookmarks to pages other than the home page may not work after we change our server in April Editor's Choice | This Week in BMJ | Press releases BMJ No 7133 Volume 316 News Saturday 7 March 1998 Two arrested in US for selling organs for transplantation The Federal Bureau of Investigations has arrested two Chinese men for conspiring to sell organs for transplantation in the United States. The organs being offered were allegedly harvested from executed Chinese prisoners. The two arrested were Wang Chengyong, a former criminal prosecutor from Hainan Province, and Xingqi Fu, a Chinese citizen currently living in New York. The two men allegedly offered corneas, lungs, livers, a kidney, a pancreas, and skin for transplantation for $5,000-$30,000 (£3,000-£19,000). The defendants were arrested in a sting operation in which Harry Wu, a former Chinese dissident and now an American citizen, posed as a director of a dialysis centre. Mr Wu said that Wang Chengyong had told him that he could guarantee the body parts of at least 50 prisoners a year and also arrange their shipment to the United States. The sale of organs for transplantation is illegal in the United States. Although human rights organisations have long held that organ harvests and trade in transplants from executed prisoners are common practice in China, Chinese government officials have persistently denied these charges. Zhu Bangzao, spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said: "The Chinese government has indicated that such incidents will not happen in China. If such incidents do occur, Chinese law will punish the offenders." The Chinese news agency, Xinhua, denied that the government was involved in organ trade but acknowledged that organ harvests from prisoners occurred when the prisoners or the prisoners' families consented to them. It is unclear, however, if prisoners would be able to refuse "voluntary organ donation." In 1993 Amnesty International called on China to ban organ harvests from executed prisoners and found that the practice was widespread. In a 1995 Senate hearing, Amnesty said that 90% of transplanted organs in China were from executed prisoners. In 1996, 4,367 people were executed in China. Of the 2,000 kidney transplantations in China every year, up to 15% involved foreigners, according to an article in the China Journal. Such transplantations are a potentially lucrative source of income for the cash starved Chinese medical system, and Chinese transplant surgeons have been known to advertise in Hong Kong for patients. Deborah Josefson San Francisco Home | Current issue | Past issues | Classified ads | Career Focus | Feedback Collections | About this site | About the BMJ | BMA | Medline