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CHINA
Although new technology has enabled doctors to safely transplant organs between people, the demand for organ transplants still far outweighs the supply of available human organs due to a scarcity of donors. In numerous countries, individuals in dire need of organs can wait weeks, months, or even years before finding a matching donor, and many pass away long before then.
The long wait has driven many people to resort to transplant tourism, a practice whereby sick individuals travel to foreign countries to obtain readily available organs that are oftentimes harvested from vulnerable populations, including prisoners and the poor.
China remains one of the primary sites of such organ harvesting from vulnerable populations. Suspicions first arose in 2006 that state-run Chinese hospitals were killing prisoners of conscience to sell their organs. Targeted groups were alleged to include religious and ethnic minorities such as Uighurs, Tibetans, underground Christians, and practitioners of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement. In particular, the Chinese government has been accused of arbitrarily detaining thousands of Falun Gong and forcing them to have blood tests and medical exams; the results were allegedly used to update the database of living organ sources, therefore enabling quick organ matches. These gruesome revelations launched intense investigations into China's organ donation system by institutions such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. In 2013, Dr. Huang Jiefu, director of China's Organ Donation Committee, reported in The Lancet that more than 90 percent of transplant organs came from executed prisoners. In December 2014, Huang announced that China would end its practice of harvesting organs from executed prisoners and transition to a completely voluntary, donation-based system by January 1, 2015. Although the Chinese government today claims that it no longer harvests organs from prisoners, several sources have uncovered evidence suggesting the practice still continues.
China began its organ transplantation program in the 1960s when the proper technology for moving organs between individuals first emerged. Until 2007, there was no oversight or regulation of the organ transplantation program, despite the fact that national oversight is indispensable to protecting the rights of donors and ensuring a fair, rather than financially...