Participants at a Vatican conference on organ trafficking on Tuesday challenged China to allow independent scrutiny to ensure it is no longer using organs from executed prisoners, saying Chinese assurances are not enough to prove the transplant program has been reformed.
Sparks flew in the afternoon session of the meeting as former Chinese minister of health Huang Jiefu (黃潔夫) sought to assure the international medical community that China was “mending its ways” after declaring an end to the prisoner harvesting program in 2015.
“I am fully aware of the speculation about my participation in the summit,” Huang told the conference, citing “continuing concerns about the transplant activities.”
Photo: AP
However, he provided scant data to rebut critics, showing only two slides indicating an increased number of living and deceased donors in recent years and China’s recent efforts to crack down on black-market transplant activities.
Huang first publicly acknowledged the inmate harvesting organ program in 2005 and later said as many as 90 percent of Chinese transplant surgeries using organs from dead people came from executed prisoners. He has spearheaded a reform effort and pledged that China put an end to the program in 2015.
However, doubts persist that China is meeting its pledge, given its lack of transparency, the severe shortage of organ donors and China’s longstanding black-market organ trade.
Huang’s colleague, Haibo Wang, stressed the sheer impossibility of trying to fully control China’s transplant activity since there are 1 million medical centers and 3 million licensed doctors operating in the nation. As a result, China proposed at the Vatican meeting that the WHO form a global task force to help crack down on illicit organ trafficking.
Jacob Lavee, president of Israel’s transplant society, said the WHO should be allowed to conduct surprise inspections and interview donor relatives in China.
“As long as there is no accountability for what took place ... there can be no guarantee for ethical reform,” he told the conference in a heated exchange.
He was joined by Gabriel Danilovitch, from the UCLA Medical Center, who challenged the Chinese delegation to declare straight out if prisoner organs were no longer used.
Wang countered that he and Huang spent the past 12 years battling critics inside China and out to reform the sector, and said China should not be singled out for spot WHO inspections.
The back-and-forth underscored the controversy over China’s participation in the conference, after critics sent a letter to organizers and Pope Francis warning that Chinese attendance amounted to a Vatican whitewash of its past practices.
However, organizers stood firm in their invitation.
“Are they doing any illegal transplantation of organs in China? We can’t say,” said Monsignor Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. “But we want to strengthen the movement for change.”
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
INSPIRING: Taiwan has been a model in the Asia-Pacific region with its democratic transition, free and fair elections and open society, the vice president-elect said Taiwan can play a leadership role in the Asia-Pacific region, vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) told a forum in Taipei yesterday, highlighting the nation’s resilience in the face of geopolitical challenges. “Not only can Taiwan help, but Taiwan can lead ... not only can Taiwan play a leadership role, but Taiwan’s leadership is important to the world,” Hsiao told the annual forum hosted by the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation think tank. Hsiao thanked Taiwan’s international friends for their long-term support, citing the example of US President Joe Biden last month signing into law a bill to provide aid to Taiwan,
China’s intrusive and territorial claims in the Indo-Pacific region are “illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive,” new US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo said on Friday, adding that he would continue working with allies and partners to keep the area free and open. Paparo made the remarks at a change-of-command ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, where he took over the command from Admiral John Aquilino. “Our world faces a complex problem set in the troubling actions of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and its rapid buildup of forces. We must be ready to answer the PRC’s increasingly intrusive and
STATE OF THE NATION: The legislature should invite the president to deliver an address every year, the TPP said, adding that Lai should also have to answer legislators’ questions The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday proposed inviting president-elect William Lai (賴清德) to make a historic first state of the nation address at the legislature following his inauguration on May 20. Lai is expected to face many domestic and international challenges, and should clarify his intended policies with the public’s representatives, KMT caucus secretary-general Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) said when making the proposal at a meeting of the legislature’s Procedure Committee. The committee voted to add the item to the agenda for Friday, along with another similar proposal put forward by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The invitation is in line with Article 15-2