New law to crack down on illegal organ harvesting
BRITISH nationals will no longer be able to travel outside the UK to buy a bodily organ, under a new law to prevent the illegal trade in harvesting and trafficking.
The legislation, given royal assent last Thursday, prohibits commercial organ tourism to countries including China.
It comes as Chinese surgeon Dr Enver Tohti, 58, who fled the country, told of being forced to cut out the kidneys and liver of a prisoner.
While the sale and trafficking of organs is illegal in the UK, until now there has been no law preventing British patients travelling to other countries for transplant surgery.
Health Minister Edward Argar said the Government was already working with NHS Blood and Transplant to make patients more aware of the “legal, health and ethical ramifications of buying an organ”.
And he said the new rule would “send an unambiguous signal that complicity in the abuses associated with the overseas organ trade will not be tolerated”.
The legislation follows a report released last week by law firm Global Rights Compliance (GRC).
It outlined the legal risks of dealing with transplant professionals in countries where trafficking and unethical transplantation take place – such as China, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Lebanon and Egypt.
The report highlights evidence of China’s state-backed harvesting programme, which has a market value of almost £800million a year.
Wayne Jordash QC, from GRC, said: “Unfortunately, the transplantation community can be complicit in unethical transplantation practices, often unknowingly.
“The medical community must join the global effort to stamp out all types of unethical sourcing.
“This trade in human misery must be stopped.”
GRC’S evidence includes the Independent China Tribunal in June 2019 which concluded China is a “criminal state” which, “beyond reasonable doubt” has committed
crimes against humanity, acts of torture, and that enemies of the state continue to be medically tested and killed for their organs. Followers of spiritual practice Falun Gong were among those used as a source for “forced harvesting” in recent decades.and there is a risk Uyghur Muslims have suffered similar treatment, the tribunal found.
Dr Tohti became involved in the illegal trade in China in 1995.
He had been working as a cancer surgeon in Urumqi, north-west China, when his chief surgeon asked him if he “wanted to do something wild”.
He agreed to meet outside his hospital with a van, two theatre nurses, two assistants and two anaesthetists. He was driven to the Western Mountain Execution Grounds, where he heard a round of rifle shots.
He then saw “more than 10” people lying on the mountainside in prisoner uniforms.all had been shot through the back of the head.
He was told by a police officer “that one is yours” and was ordered to “cut deep and work fast” on a victim in civilian clothes.
The father-of-three said: “I started cutting down the middle and he started struggling. I realised he was still alive but too weak to resist me.
“Blood was coming out of the cut, which means the heart was still pumping.”
The horrified medic was ordered to remove the liver and both kidneys, sew the body back up, and “remember that nothing happened”.
Dr Tohti, who now works as an Uber driver in London, said he “felt like a robot” when he was doing the work. Since then he has suffered flashbacks and nightmares, and has dedicated his life to campaigning for awareness of the practice.
‘He was alive but too weak to resist me’