The Globe and Mail, 02/01/07
OTTAWA -- Exasperated by long waits at hospitals here, a growing number of Canadians are flying to China to buy organs possibly harvested from executed prisoners, two prominent lawyers said yesterday.
To curb this practice, Foreign Affairs should post a travel advisory warning Canadians against Chinese transplants, said David Kilgour, a former MP, and David Matas, a Winnipeg-based human rights lawyer.
Dealings between the two countries have been tense, and the remarks are likely to further strain the relationship, which is already clouded by the jailing of a Canadian citizen in China.
The issue also worries doctors here, who see it as an illustration of the dire situation of Canadian patients who wait for transplants.
"Everywhere else in the world, you have recipients waiting for donors. In China, it's the reverse, donors are waiting for recipients," Mr. Matas said yesterday, after releasing a second report on this issue. "Once a customer arrives into China somebody is killed for the organ."
Since they released their first report in July, Mr. Kilgour and Mr. Matas travelled throughout Asia, where they said they found new evidence that Chinese authorities are harvesting the organs of jailed Falun Gong practitioners.
For instance, organ recipients have told the lawyers they received care from military doctors in military hospitals, which could indicate the involvement of the Chinese army, the pair said.
The lawyers say they found that as many as 41,500 transplant operations in China have probably been performed using organs transplanted from prisoners. Their two-month investigation was commissioned by the Washington-based Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.
Other international human-rights organizations said they are concerned about reports of forced organ harvesting in China, but do not have evidence that prisoners are executed for this purpose.
In a statement released yesterday, the Chinese embassy denied this practice is taking place and insisted medical authorities abide by World Health Organization standards.
But Canadian doctors said their patients who return from China with a transplanted organ almost never have documents showing the origin of the donor.
"Ethically, it's a very difficult thing for me to come to terms with," said Dr. Jeffrey Zaltzman, the director of transplantation at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto.
Over the past few years, Dr. Zaltzman said, he has encountered about 20 patients who returned from China with a new organ but little knowledge of the donor.
The two lawyers estimate that around 100 Canadians went to China for organs in recent years. That number is relatively low when compared with the roughly 4,000 patients awaiting transplantation in Canada last year. But doctors and medical experts say growing waiting times are pushing more people to seek organs outside the country.
In China, a kidney can be bought for $62,000 within months, according to Mr. Matas and Mr. Kilgour's report, while patients can wait as long as eight years in Canada.