Speak out on China's organ harvesting

"An organ transplant can save a life, but removing an organ from a living person for transplant is manslaughter, " said Wang Wenyi, a China-born pathologist who became famous last April when she created a scene by shouting at visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao and his American host George W. Bush during a White House welcoming ceremony.

Wang arrived in Taiwan Wednesday for a lecture tour aimed at invoking people's consciences to halt the alleged practice in China of harvesting human organs from imprisoned Falun Gong spiritual movement followers while they are still alive.

Her proof of China's live human organ harvesting comes from just two Falung Gong practitioners from Shengyang in northeast China. The husband of one of them is a surgeon who claims to have personally removed organs from a living person.

After hearing their horrifying accounts,Wang said she immediately searched the Internet for relevant information and found that the Chinese government has a long-established Web site for organ sales.

"U.S. dollar prices for five different organs are listed and the contents translated into five languages,apparently aimed at soliciting patients from around the world to visit China to receive organ transplants, " she said, noting that on a Web page is acknowledgement to the Chinese government, China's public security bureau, the police authorities and prisons.

Wang, who has lived in the United States for 20 years, is a pathologist at the Mount Sinai Hospital and knows that in some countries, strict tests must be done before an organ can be transplanted. In the United States, she said, a patient usually has to wait five years before a suitable new organ is available for transplant, yet some Chinese hospitals claim that it can be done "within a week or two, or a month at the maximum" as long as the patient is willing to pay for it.

Wang also works as a reporter for the Epoch Times, the mouthpiece of the Falun Gong movement -- a title that enabled her to cover the White House event and stage her antics on the South Lawn. She said Epoch Times journalists have confirmed that at least 15 Chinese hospitals offer the "money for quick transplant" service. "Answers from these hospitals were all tape recorded," she said.

She quoted China's Ministry of Health statistics as reporting that between 1993 to 1999, some 18,000 patients received organ transplants in China. From 1999, when China started to crack down on Falun Gong, to 2005, the figure jumped to 60,000.

The average number of death-row prisoners executed each year was less than 2,000, therefore it could explain the number of organ transplants for the 1993-1999 period. But how can the sudden surge for 1999-2005 be explained when death row executions had not sharply increased? she asked.

"The only reasonable explanation is harvesting organs from living persons," Wang Wenyi claimed in an interview with CNA.

She said China has set up nearly 40 "concentration camps" where Falun Gong practitioners are imprisoned and brutally tortured if "brainwashing" sessions designed to make them renounce the practice fail.

One "special treatment" for jailed Falun Gong followers is regular blood tests and checks on their hearts and lungs, a practice she claimed is aimed at establishing a huge "live organ databank" that makes it possible to realize how the fast transplants can be carried out.

In China, life is not sacred. Rather, it is a commodity that can be window shopped, Wang claimed.

She said that when she condemned Hu Jintao's human rights policy in Chinese and shouted "President Bush, stop him from killing, " and "President Bush, stop him from persecuting the Falun Gong" at the White House ceremony, she was speaking for justice and human conscience.

As a physician, "it is my job to save lives, " but harvesting organs from living human beings simply is against humanity. "This is why I have no fear of China's persecution or about my personal safety when I decided to expose China's brutality to the world," she said.

Wang said that as a medical professional and as a journalist, she did not choose to remain silent and to evade the harsh reality. "I have chosen to stand on the side of truth, justice and human rights. I hope more people will do the same."