By Julie Wheldon
Doctors in China are selling organs from executed prisoners to wealthy Westerners for as much as £50 000 (R720 000), it emerged last night.
The grisly practice adds to mounting evidence of the global trade in body parts.
Only last week it emerged at least 40 British patients may have been given transplants using organs harvested by American corpse-snatchers.
'It's true we use a lot of organs from executed prisoners' More than 1 000 bodies, including that of veteran broadcaster Alistair Cooke, were stolen from US funeral parlours by the Mafia and sold for use in bone grafts.
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The UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency revealed that 25 British hospitals bought tissue that could have been taken from these potentially contaminated corpses.
Now a BBC team has exposed how foreigners can travel to China to buy themselves a new organ from executed prisoners. A reporter posing as a man looking for a liver for his sick father, was told a matching organ could be made available within less than three weeks for £50 000.
Officials at the hospital in northern China openly admitted where the organs came from. "It's true we use a lot of organs from executed prisoners," one official admitted.
"The prisoners on death row have done many bad things and before they die they give their organs as a present to society."
He even advised the reporter to try to get his sick father to the clinic in time for China's National Day on October 1 as there would be an increase of executions in the run up to the event, which would lead to an abundance of available organs.
It is not clear whether any Britons have visited the hospital to buy an organ, but according to the undercover team, the cafeteria was buzzing with foreign visitors.
Some 95 percent of organs transplanted in China come from executed prisoners and the authorities insist they give their consent. However, campaigners have raised questions over whether they are truly free to make their own decisions.
Earlier this year it was claimed some of the organs were harvested from prisoners while they were still alive. Human rights groups said execution dates are being made to fit in with the needs of wealthy foreigners who want the prisoner's organs.
Labour MP Robert Evans has called for a ban on so-called "transplant tourists"
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This article was originally published on page 9 of Daily News on September 29, 2006
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