China’s organ donation figures appear to be falsified, study claims

China’s organ donation numbers appear to have been systematically manipulated and falsified, according to new research which casts doubt on the credibility of the country’s transplantation reforms.

The number of organs the Chinese government claims it has voluntarily collected since 2010 seems “too neat to be true” and appears to have been based on a simple quadratic equation, according to the study published in the journal BMC Medical Ethics.1

In 2010, in response to international criticism, China started to move from using prisoners as an organ source to voluntary donors. Chinese officials announced that from 2015 hospital based donors would be the sole source of organs.2

China’s healthcare officials have reported extraordinary successes. From 2010, annual voluntary deceased donors went from 34 to 6316; kidney and livers transplanted went …