TORONTO -- Foreign patients who travel to China for transplants are likely receiving organs culled from political prisoners who are alive when their corneas, kidneys and livers are harvested, then left to die, an international group of doctors is warning.

China has long used organs from executed criminals, but since 2000 has turned to living donors and outlawed Falun Gong members to supply a growing trade in medical transplants, Doctors Against Organ Harvesting said yesterday.

The newly formed organization is seeking to warn 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 Washington, D.C.-based physician and founding member of Doctors Against Organ Harvesting.

The group is sounding the alarm in the medical community about evidence of unethical transplants in China and want doctors to impress the information upon their patients.