Murders masquerading as medicine

OPINION:

During the Cold War, the World Psychiatric Association consistently condemned Soviet psychiatric facilities for the abuse of political dissidents. Soviet psychiatrists faced international isolation. Yet startling research reveals that we possess more detailed knowledge of the practices within China’s transplant hospitals today than we ever did about Soviet psychiatric abuses.

Evidence compiled by Dr. Jacob Lavee, director of heart transplantation at Sheba Medical Center in Israel, and Matthew Robertson, a China studies research fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, indicates that Chinese transplant hospitals use a vast supply of organs sourced from living political and religious prisoners.

Chinese academic studies confirm that a number of these people, selected based on blood type, health, age and sometimes even dietary habits, are killed through the organ extraction process.

Dr. Enver Tohti, a Uyghur surgeon now residing in London, provided harrowing testimony. In 1995, near Urumqi, Xinjiang, he was ordered to remove the liver and kidneys from a prisoner who had been shot but was still alive. Dr. Tohti has stated under oath that the man died during the procedure. “That man had been shot but, technically, I killed him,” he confessed, “and that still haunts me to this day.”

Whether by gunshot or lethal injection preceding extraction, killing victims through organ harvesting ensures organ freshness and substantial profits for China’s transplant industry. Consequently, patients from China and abroad — including North America, Europe, Japan, South Korea and the Gulf States — face minimal wait times. Premium payments can secure organs within two weeks; in urgent liver failure cases, waits have reportedly been as short as four hours.

Beijing’s response to these grave allegations has often involved semantic deflection, promising reforms such as ending the “routine” harvesting of organs from executed prisoners. Although some evidence suggests a decline in prisoner executions, Beijing’s definition of “prisoners” historically has excluded groups such as Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans, house church Christians and Uyghurs. Thus, when China announced in 2015 that it would cease using organs from death row inmates, eliciting praise from some Western medical circles, skepticism remained.

A 2016 report by researchers David Kilgour, Ethan Gutmann and David Matas compellingly argued that China’s annual transplant numbers were likely closer to 60,000, far exceeding the officially stated 10,000. Further research by Jacob Lavee, Matthew Robertson and statistician Raymond Hinde found that China’s official data on voluntary organ donations appeared mathematically constructed rather than based on factual reporting.

If not from voluntary donors or officially executed prisoners, where did the organs originate? The rapid expansion of China’s transplant industry coincided with the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners beginning in the late 1990s. By 2013, however, police began forcibly collecting blood and DNA samples specifically from Falun Gong adherents in several provinces, hinting at a dwindling supply from this group. A year later, mandatory “health checks,” including blood tests, were imposed on all Uyghurs older than 12 in Xinjiang, facilitated by technology such as DNA testing kits sold by Western companies, including Thermo Fisher Scientific. Unsurprisingly, Han Chinese residents were exempt. Simultaneously, construction began on the vast network of internment camps in the region.

Despite international concern and offers to help implement ethical transplant practices, Beijing has largely ignored external appeals. Continuity defines China’s transplant practices. Recent testimony from Xinjiang camp survivors, documented by Mr. Gutmann, author of “The Slaughter,” describes two groups leaving the camps.

One group, primarily adults around 18, was euphemistically “graduating” to forced labor in eastern factories. The second group, averaging 28, the preferred age for transplant surgeons, disappeared under different circumstances. After campwide blood tests, certain people, sometimes identified by colored bracelets or vests, would vanish overnight without ceremony. References to these “unpersons” became perilous. Witnesses consistently estimate that 2.5% to 5% of the camp population disappears this way annually, potentially tens of thousands of individuals selected, as one survivor noted, because “they were healthy.”

The Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2025, which passed the House by a 406-1 vote, directly addresses this horrific reality of murder masquerading as medicine. It aims to disrupt the Chinese transplant industry by denying entry to implicated Chinese transplant personnel, exposing their international collaborators, and establishing a dedicated initiative to gather and transparently report intelligence on China’s transplant system.

This legislation marks a crucial beginning, not an end, in what may be a long struggle. Just as the global psychiatric community united against Soviet abuses, the international community must now take a decisive stand against forced organ harvesting in China. Passing the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2025 is essential.

• Rep. Chris Smith (https://chrissmith.house.gov/) is a Republican representing New Jersey’s 4th Congressional District and co-chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. Eric Patterson is president and CEO of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (https://victimsofcommunism.org/).