As Chinese Media Brag About Lung Transplant, Others Question the Source

Double-lung transplant.
A Twitter comment on a Chinese state media report on a double-lung transplant for a person sick from coronavirus. (Image: via Nspirement)

The Chinese Communist Party’s Global Times ran an article on March 1 about “the world’s first double-lung transplant” for somebody sick with the coronavirus. The lung transplant, the paper said, was of “great significance in reducing critical cases” of the virus, which is believed to have killed many thousands in China.

While Global Times — and other state-run media — said that the lungs came from a volunteer brain-dead donor, others outside China’s borders have raised concerns about how the lungs were sourced.

“The fact that two matching lungs were found in a few days raises new suspicions of organ harvesting,” was part of the subhead for an article written by researcher Ruth Ingram for online magazine Bitter Winter.

“The patient, who on February 24, was given days to live following rapid deterioration of his lung function, had only to wait a matter of five days before a perfectly matching, ‘consenting,’ brain-dead donor could be found, conveniently a mere seven hours by high-speed train from Wuxi, where the operation was to take place,” Ingram wrote.

“Whilst around the world waiting times for a single lung from a suitable donor could be years, China has shown this week that it need only be days, for two perfectly matched lungs to be rustled up.”

Man in blue scrubs holding his hands out while a hologram of human lungs is overlaid on top.
Though wait times around the world for a single lung could be years, China came up with two perfectly matched lungs in just a few days. (Image: Александр Марко via Dreamstime)

Was the double-lung transplant from organ harvesting?

Ingram pointed out that the reports of the double-lung transplant coincided with the March 1 publication of the final judgment of the London Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting in China.

“The much-vaunted news report is a timely illustration of the suspicions and conclusions reached by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC and his team over six months of witness statements and somber personal accounts, held from December 2018 to May 2019,” Ingram wrote.

“The full tribunal report contains shocking new evidence that President Jiang Zemin (1993-2003) himself issued the order to harvest organs from Falun Gong practitioners, and that Chinese government complicity is evidenced at every turn,” Ingram wrote, referring to the main victims of organ harvesting in China.

The tribunal’s report included testimonies provided by researchers and experts such as Wendy Rogers, who is a professor of clinical ethics at Macquarie University in Sydney, and Dr. Jacob Lavee, who is a professor of surgery and a past president of the Israel Transplantation Society.

Dr. Lavee told the UK’s Daily Mail that he had no doubt that the majority of the 712 transplant hospitals in China used organs from unethical sources such as prisoners held for their faith.

Plastic models of a human liver, heart, and kidney with price tags and a barcode to represent forced organ harvesting.
Dr. Jacob Lavee has no doubt that the majority of the transplant hospitals in China used organs from unethical sources such as prisoners held for their faith. (Image: Victor Moussa via Dreamstime)

“Chinese physicians are not only involved in mass murder and crimes against humanity but the international community and World Health Organisation for some reason shut their eyes against these crimes,” Dr. Lavee told the British paper.

Among the report’s witness testimonies were from Uyghurs, Falun Gong practitioners, and some of those involved in actual acts of organ harvesting.

The report said that organ harvesting is ongoing in China.

“Forced organ harvesting has happened in multiple places in the PRC (People’s Republic of China) and on multiple occasions for a period of at least 20 years and continues to this day,” said the report.

“In the long-term practice in the PRC of forced organ harvesting it was indeed Falun Gong practitioners who were used as a source — probably the principal source — of organs for forced organ harvesting,” the report said.

Based on a year-long investigation, the tribunal’s report has prompted further concerns over the outrage that first came to light in 2006 following claims that imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners were being killed for their organs in Northeastern China.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline based on meditation and slow-moving exercises, with practitioners following three main principles: Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance.

It began in northern China during the early 1990s. Easy to learn and free, it quickly spread through China and beyond its borders. Due to the practice’s popularity, the Chinese communist state began to persecute Falun Gong practitioners in 1999.

Watch this video about the tribunal and its findings:

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