TORONTO - Foreign patients who travel to China for transplants are likely receiving organs taken from political prisoners who are alive when their corneas, kidneys and livers are removed, then left to die, an international group of doctors armed with a chilling Canadian report is warning.

In a new twist on an old practice of removing organs from executed criminals, China has turned to living donors and outlawed Falun Gong members to supply a growing trade in transplants, Doctors Against Organ Harvesting said Thursday at a public forum at the University of Toronto.

With increasing numbers of Canadians on waiting lists turning to China to save their lives, the newly formed organization warns patients that someone else's life is likely being sacrificed in the process of obtaining organs.

"Each person who travels to China for an organ causes the death of another human," said Dr. Torsten Trey, a founding member of the organization.

The group is sounding the alarm in the medical community about mounting evidence of unethical transplants in China. They want doctors to impress the information upon their patients. They want hospitals and universities to close their doors to visiting Chinese physicians and scholars looking to hone their techniques. And they want medical journals to reject research on transplants conducted in China.

The doctor's group was formed in the wake of a Canadian investigation released last year.

Authored by former Liberal MP David Kilgour and Winnipeg human rights lawyer David Matas, the report claims there is a widespread and systematic policy in China of selling organs from living donors to a growing clientele of desperate patients.

Kilgour said Thursday it is clear Falun Gong members are being targeted over other ethnic groups and religions, in a campaign to villainize their spiritual practice since it fell out of favour with the government in 2000.

The report's conclusions were drawn from interviews with a handful of eyewitnesses from the medical staff, recipients of organs recovered in China, official government pronouncements, statistics showing a sudden explosion in the number of transplants performed, marketing websites and undercover inquiries to hospitals.

In one instance, an Asian patient recounted that after rifling through a list of potential donors, a military doctor departed and returned to the hospital several times, bringing back eight kidneys before settling on a match.

In another, a sick patient found out one day he needed a transplant and had an organ within 24 hours.

Websites market transplants in China in five different languages and in some cases guarantee availability of a matching organ within two weeks. The average wait time for a kidney in Canada is 321/2 months.

The exposure of China's transplant industry, he added, should also be a wake-up call to Canadians to sign their donor cards and talk to their families so the sick are not forced to make such desperate choices. "If more organs were available there would be no need to become an organ tourist," he said.