China challenged at conference on organ trafficking

VATICAN CITY — Participants at a Vatican conference on organ trafficking challenged China on Tuesday to allow independent scrutiny to ensure it is no longer using organs from executed prisoners, saying Chinese assurances aren’t enough to prove the transplant program has been reformed.

Sparks flew in the afternoon session of the meeting as China’s former vice-health minister, Huang Jiefu, sought to assure the international medical community that China was “mending its ways” after declaring an end to the prisoner harvesting program in 2015.

“I am fully aware of the speculation about my participation in the summit,” Huang told the conference, citing “continuing concerns about the transplant activities.”

He provided scant data to rebut critics, however, showing only two slides indicating an increased number of living and deceased donors in recent years and China’s recent efforts to crack down on black market transplant activities.

Huang publicly acknowledged the inmate-harvesting organ program in 2005 and later said as many as 90 per cent of Chinese transplant surgeries using organs from dead people came from executed prisoners. He has spearheaded a reform effort and pledged that China put an end to the program in 2015.

But doubts persist that China is meeting its pledge, given its lack of transparency, the shortage of organ donors and China’s longstanding black-market organ trade.

The Vatican conference is part of Pope Francis’s efforts to crack down on trafficking in humans and organs.