Transplantation: researchers urge retraction of 400 papers amid fears that organs were from Chinese prisoners

Researchers have called for the immediate retraction of more than 400 scientific papers on transplantation because the organs were likely to have been obtained unethically from executed prisoners in China.

Writing in the journal BMJ Open,1 the Australian researchers criticised the transplant research community for failing to implement ethical standards banning the publication of research using material from executed prisoners—some of whom may be prisoners of conscience.

Wendy Rogers, professor of clinical ethics at Macquarie University in Sydney, and coauthors highlighted a “significant lack of vigilance and failure to stick to accepted ethical standards on the part of reviewers, editors and publishers” and found this “morally concerning.”