[Congressional Bills 111th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 6148 Introduced in House (IH)]

111th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                H. R. 6148

     To combat trafficking in human organs, and for other purposes.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           September 16, 2010

 Ms. Ros-Lehtinen introduced the following bill; which was referred to 
                    the Committee on Foreign Affairs

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
     To combat trafficking in human organs, and for other purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Trafficking in Organs Victims 
Protection Act''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    Congress finds the following:
            (1) World Health Organization (WHO) officials have 
        estimated that approximately 10 percent of all transplanted 
        kidneys worldwide are illegally obtained, often bought from 
        impoverished persons who sell their organs out of desperation 
        or harvested from prisoners.
            (2) The Council of Europe is investigating allegations made 
        by Ms. Carla del Ponte, a former chief prosecutor at the 
        International Criminal Tribunal of the Former Yugoslavia, that 
        approximately 300 ethnic Serbs in Kosovo were kidnapped in 1999 
        with their organs being forcibly removed for sale by their 
        captors.
            (3) The Special Rapporteur for the Council of Europe's 
        Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee, Mrs. Ruth-Gaby 
        Vermot-Mangold, interviewed a number of coerced kidney donors 
        during a May 2003 visit to Moldova, who were all young men 
        driven by extreme poverty to sell their kidneys for a sum of 
        $2,500 to $3,000, and reported that the medical follow-up of 
        these illegal organ harvesting operations lasted no more than 
        five days, after which the donors were sent back on a bus to 
        their home country, frequently causing permanent disabilities 
        due to complications from the operations.
            (4) The Council of Europe's Special Rapporteur, Vermot-
        Mangold, also reported that the recipients of these kidneys 
        were estimated to have paid between $100,000 and $250,000 for 
        kidney transplants.
            (5) On June 3, 2003, the Council of Europe's Special 
        Rapporteur, Vermot-Mangold, testified that international 
        criminal organizations had exploited those in extreme poverty 
        in nations in Eastern Europe in order to harvest their organs 
        for sale on the black market.
            (6) Between 2001 and 2003, a South African black market 
        kidney transplant ring coerced over 109 impoverished people, 
        mostly from Brazil and Romania, to travel to Durban, South 
        Africa to forfeit a kidney for the promise of approximately 
        $120,000, with that payment sometimes not being provided 
        following the operation.
            (7) According to the January 2007 report by David Matas and 
        David Kilgore entitled, ``Bloody Harvest: Revised Report into 
        Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in 
        China'', the website of the Organ Transplant Center of the 
        Armed Police General Hospital in Beijing, China stated in 2004 
        that, ``Our Organ Transplant Center is our main department for 
        making money. Its gross income in 2003 was 16,070,000 yuan. 
        From January to June of 2004, income was 13,570,000 yuan. This 
        year (2004) there is a chance to break through 30,000,000 
        yuan.''.
            (8) In May 2004, the World Health Assembly passed a 
        resolution urging its member-states to take measures to protect 
        the poorest as well as vulnerable groups from exploitation by 
        organ traffickers.
            (9) On May 3, 2004, Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty 
        reported that Afghanistan's Interior Minister Ali Ahmed Lakali 
        announced that in 2003 the Interior department had made over 
        100 arrests on charges of child abduction, and stated that the 
        problem was growing as children were being taken to be sold for 
        ``sex or labor, or to provide human organs''.
            (10) On November 20, 2004, Xin Ren from California State 
        University stated to the International Bureau for Children's 
        Rights Conference in Montreal, that, ``[In 2003] [c]hildren 
        were often either sold by their parents for little money or 
        kidnapped and abducted by the traffickers to have their 
        organ(s) removed for transplant purpose. . . . [S]ome people 
        were even murdered in the process of forcible removal of their 
        organs.''.
            (11) According to the January 2007 report by David Matas 
        and David Kilgore, from 2000 through 2005, the sources of the 
        organs used were not identified in an estimated 41,500 organ 
        transplants that were performed in China during that period.
            (12) On March 30, 2006, the Police Superintendent of 
        Paranaque, Philippines announced the arrest of a suspect 
        alleged to have been involved with a kidnapping syndicate in 
        the region which had been abducting children to remove and sell 
        their organs on the global black market, as in the case of one 
        child who was discovered dead in Cavite, Philippines with his 
        internal organs missing.
            (13) In March 2006, a children's rights expert at the 
        Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, Hengameh Anwari, 
        stated, ``Other reports that cause concern indicate that a 
        number of children are abducted because of their body organs; 
        they become victims of trafficking to foreign countries 
        especially for their kidneys.''.
            (14) In mid-November 2006, China's Deputy Health Minister 
        Huang Jiefu acknowledged that executed prisoners sentenced to 
        death are sources for organ transplants, and Asia News reported 
        that Deputy Health Minister Huang had said he was cognizant of 
        the fact that too often organs come from non-consenting parties 
        and are sold for high fees to foreigners.
            (15) Senator Patrik Vankrunkelsven of Belgium reported that 
        in November 2006 he called two hospitals in China and was 
        offered a kidney by each facility for the price of 50,000 
        Euros.
            (16) According to the January 2007 report by David Matas 
        and David Kilgore, the website for the China International 
        Transplantation Network Assistance Centre in May 2006 posted 
        the following statements in its frequently asked questions 
        section: ``The First Affiliated Hospital of China was 
        established in 2003 specifically for our foreign friends . . . 
        Viscera providers can be found immediately! . . . The supreme 
        demotic [``people's''] court, supreme demotic law-officer, 
        police, judiciary, department of health and civil 
        administration have enacted law together to make sure organ 
        donations are supported by the government . . . Our organs do 
        not come from brain death victims because the organ may not be 
        good.''.
            (17) On January 8, 2007, the Sun newspaper of London 
        reported that a severe shortage of available organs for 
        transplant in the United Kingdom had contributed to that 
        country becoming one of the top recipients of illegally 
        trafficked organs.
            (18) In 2007, Pakistan was identified by the WHO as one of 
        the top destinations for ``transplant tourism''.
            (19) Pakistani authorities in April 2007 raided a black 
        market organ ring in Lahore that consisted of doctors, 
        officials, and middlemen who had abducted potential donors, 
        drugged them and removed their kidneys without consent to then 
        sell for profit.
            (20) Dr. Zafar ul Ahsan, a top urologist at Fatima Jinnah 
        Hospital in Lahore, Pakistan, stated in September 2007, 
        ``Nearly 2,000 kidneys are transplanted in Pakistan every year, 
        and seventy percent are bought by foreigners from Saudi Arabia, 
        the UAE, Britain and Canada . . . A mafia is running Pakistan's 
        kidney transplant business with agents paying $1,000 to poor 
        donors and then selling their kidneys on the black market for 
        thousands of dollars.''.
            (21) According to organ trafficking specialists at the WHO, 
        the country of Moldova ranks third as a source of organs for 
        sale on the global black market, with such human organs 
        frequently smuggled into neighboring Romania for delivery to 
        underground clinics located in several European Union member-
        states.
            (22) In 2007, five employees of the tissue bank at the 
        Faculty Hospital in Brno-Bohunice, the Czech Republic, were 
        arrested and charged with illegal organ trafficking for selling 
        more than $340,000 worth of illegally obtained skin grafts to a 
        tissue bank in the Netherlands.
            (23) In January 2008, the Government of India's Health 
        Ministry released an estimate that more than 100,000 kidney 
        transplants are needed in India each year, but only 5,000 are 
        performed legally.
            (24) On February 13, 2008, the United Nations Global 
        Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UNGIFT) hosted the 
        ``Vienna Forum to Fight Human Trafficking'', and cited in its 
        subsequent report that a lack of adequate laws against illicit 
        organ trafficking has created the opportunity for such illegal 
        trade to grow and that there were clear indications that organ 
        trafficking was increasing and frequently involved members of 
        international criminal organizations.
            (25) On April 12, 2008, police raided a black market organ 
        transplant house near Manila, Philippines, arresting three 
        traffickers and discovering nine donors in the house, one of 
        whom stated to authorities that he had been promised $2,800 for 
        his kidney, and he was doing it because, ``I can barely provide 
        for my wife and children.''.
            (26) On April 30, 2008, the Government of the Philippines 
        passed a ban on transplants to foreign citizens, except in 
        cases of familial relations, in response to data showing that 
        kidney transplants from Filipinos to foreign recipients had 
        increased over 60 percent between 2002 and 2006, which 
        confirmed earlier reports of a thriving illegal organ black 
        market in the Philippines.
            (27) On November 17, 2008, the Congress of the Philippines 
        passed a resolution which directed a Senate committee to 
        investigate the rising instances of child organ trafficking in 
        the country, and stated that the National Bureau of 
        Investigation's Human Trafficking Division reported that, ``the 
        abducted children are housed somewhere in Mindanao where 
        victims are supplied with vitamin supplements to keep their 
        internal organs healthy, and are then transported outside the 
        country to undergo surgery for organ transplants''.
            (28) In November 2008, Kosovar police searched a private 
        clinic and found drugs and blood in plastic bags, and charged 
        two doctors for the crime of performing illegal organ 
        transplants.
            (29) A February 2008 police raid on an organ trafficking 
        ring in Gurgaon, India found that men posing as doctors to 
        remove kidneys from migrant laborers conducted approximately 
        five hundred illegal kidney transplants over nine years, and 
        possessed a waiting list of potential recipients of those 
        organs from Canada, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, the United 
        Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.
            (30) On April 8, 2009, the Global Post in Cairo reported 
        that the Egyptian Government was considering legal measures to 
        increase the number of legal organ donations to meet demand, 
        which included a proposal supported by some in the religious 
        community to harvest organs from executed criminals, with or 
        without their consent, as Ministry of Health spokesman, Dr. 
        Abdel Rahman Shahin stated, ``They [some religious clerics in 
        favor of the measure] are saying that when [convicts'] organs 
        are taken, they're compensating for the bad they did.''.
            (31) According to a June 1989 report by Georgetown 
        University's Joseph and Rose Kennedy Institute of Ethics 
        entitled, ``Anencephalic Infants as Potential Organ Sources: 
        Ethical and Legal Issues'', some European physicians have 
        addressed the shortage of human organs available for transplant 
        by disregarding bioethical standards and removing the vital 
        organs from anencephalic infants, prior to the medical 
        determination of whether total brain death or cardiac death had 
        occurred, on the ground that these infants were ``brain-
        absent'' and could be treated as if they were brain dead or, 
        alternatively, that they were sufficiently lacking in cognitive 
        capacity that the usual moral constraints on killing persons 
        did not apply, which in effect authorized them to actively 
        cause the death of these infants.

SEC. 3. SENSE OF CONGRESS.

    It is the sense of Congress that--
            (1) the kidnapping or coercion of individuals for the 
        purpose of extracting their organs for profit is abhorrent and 
        in contradiction of the ideals and standards for ethical 
        behavior upon which the United States has based its laws;
            (2) the harvesting of organs from living children, 
        regardless of the level of brain activity, is a violation of 
        the human rights of the child and is a breach of 
        internationally-accepted medical ethical standards described in 
        World Health Organization Assembly Resolution 57.18 (May 22, 
        2004); and
            (3) the illegal harvesting and trafficking of human organs 
        violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in Articles 
        3 which states, ``Everyone has the right to life, liberty and 
        security of person.'', and Article 4 which states, ``No one 
        shall be held in slavery or servitude.''.

SEC. 4. STATEMENT OF POLICY.

    It shall be the policy of the United States to--
            (1) seek to end the offensive practice of exploiting the 
        poor and vulnerable for the purpose of harvesting and 
        trafficking their organs;
            (2) combat criminal trade in human organs; and
            (3) promote the dignity and security of human life in 
        accordance to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

SEC. 5. AMENDMENTS TO THE FOREIGN ASSISTANCE ACT OF 1961.

    (a) Annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.--Section 
116(f)(1)(B)(v) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 
2151n(f)(1)(B)(v)) is amended by inserting after ``mental and physical 
health care'' the following: ``, post-operative and rehabilitation care 
for victims of trafficking in human organs (as defined in section 103 
of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000),''.
    (b) Assistance to Foreign Countries To Meet Minimum Standards for 
the Elimination of Trafficking.--Section 134(a) of the Foreign 
Assistance Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 2152d(a)) is amended by inserting 
after ``of 2000)'' the following: ``, including the elimination of 
trafficking in human organs (as defined in section 103 of the 
Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000)''.

SEC. 6. AMENDMENTS TO THE TRAFFICKING VICTIMS PROTECTION ACT OF 2000.

    (a) Definitions.--Section 103 of the Trafficking Victims Protection 
Act of 2000 (22 U.S.C. 7102) is amended--
            (1) in paragraph (2)--
                    (A) in subparagraph (B), by striking ``or'' at the 
                end;
                    (B) in subparagraph (C), by striking the period at 
                the end and inserting ``; or''; and
                    (C) by adding at the end the following:
                    ``(D) exploitation of a person through the promise 
                of granting of payments or benefits in order to compel 
                or entice the person to consent to the removal of one 
                or more of the person's organs for a transplant 
                operation, in a manner contrary to the standards 
                described in World Health Organization Assembly 
                Resolution WHA 57.18 (May 22, 2004).'';
            (2) in paragraph (8)--
                    (A) in subparagraph (A), by striking ``or'' at the 
                end;
                    (B) in subparagraph (B), by striking the period at 
                the end and inserting: ``; or''; and
                    (C) by adding at the end the following:
                    ``(C) trafficking in human organs (as defined in 
                paragraph (12)).'';
            (3) by redesignating paragraphs (12) through (14) as 
        paragraphs (13) through (15), respectively; and
            (4) by inserting after paragraph (11) the following:
            ``(12) Trafficking in human organs.--
                    ``(A) In general.--The term `trafficking in human 
                organs' means the recruitment, transportation, 
                transfer, harboring, or receipt of a person, by means 
                of coercion or abduction, for the purpose of removing 
                one or more of the person's organs, and the illicit 
                transportation and transplantation of those organs in 
                one or more other persons for profit or any other 
                purpose.
                    ``(B) Organ defined.--In subparagraph (A), the term 
                `organ' means the human (including fetal) kidney, 
                liver, heart, lung, pancreas, bone marrow, cornea, eye, 
                bone, and skin or any subpart thereof and any other 
                human organ (or any subpart thereof, including that 
                derived from a fetus) specified by the President by 
                regulation for purposes of this division.''.
    (b) Reports to Congress.--Section 110(b)(1) of the Trafficking 
Victims Protection Act of 2000 (22 U.S.C. 7107(b)(1)) is amended--
            (1) in subparagraph (E), by striking ``and'' at the end;
            (2) in subparagraph (F), by striking the period at the end 
        and inserting ``; and''; and
            (3) by adding at the end the following:
                    ``(G) with respect to trafficking in human organs--
                            ``(i) a list of the 10 countries determined 
                        to be the largest source of illegally 
                        trafficked human organs during the period 
                        covered by the report and a list of the 10 
                        countries determined to be the largest 
                        recipients of illegally trafficked human organs 
                        during the period covered by the report;
                            ``(ii) any actions taken by each country 
                        listed under clause (i) to address and prevent 
                        trafficking in human organs;
                            ``(iii) any cooperative efforts by the 
                        United States and each country listed under 
                        clause (i) to address and prevent trafficking 
                        in human organs through joint public awareness 
                        campaigns; and
                            ``(iv) information regarding practices of 
                        trafficking in human organs of each country 
                        listed under clause (i) in the Department of 
                        State's travel advisories.''.

SEC. 7. AMENDMENTS TO THE STATE DEPARTMENT BASIC AUTHORITIES ACT OF 
              1956.

    Section 42 of the State Department Basic Authorities Act of 1956 
(22 U.S.C. 2714) is amended--
            (1) in subsection (a), by striking ``convicted of an 
        offense described in subsection (b) of this section during the 
        period described in subsection (c) of this section'' and 
        inserting ``convicted of an offense described in subsection (b) 
        or (c) of this section during the period described in 
        subsection (d) of this section'';
            (2) by redesignating subsections (c), (d), and (e) as 
        subsections (d), (e), and (f), respectively; and
            (3) by inserting after subsection (b) the following:
    ``(c) Human Organ Trafficking Offenses.--Subsection (a) of this 
section applies with respect to any individual convicted of an offense 
under section 301 of the National Organ Transplant Act (42 U.S.C. 
274e).''.

SEC. 8. ACTIONS UNDER THE INTERNATIONAL EMERGENCY ECONOMIC POWERS ACT.

    (a) In General.--The President may exercise the authorities set 
forth in section 203 of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act 
(50 U.S.C. 1702) without regard to section 202 of that Act (50 U.S.C. 
1701) in the case of any of the following:
            (1) The export of anti-rejection human organ transplant 
        drugs to countries identified by the Secretary of State as the 
        largest source of illegally trafficked human organs or the 
        largest recipients of illegally trafficked human organs in the 
        report required under section 110(b) of the Trafficking Victims 
        Protection Act of 2000 (22 U.S.C. 7107(b)).
            (2) The travel abroad by United States citizens for the 
        purpose of participation in any activity relating to human 
        organ trafficking (as defined in section 103 of the Trafficking 
        Victims Protection Act of 2000).
    (b) Penalties.--The penalties set forth in section 206 of the 
International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1705) apply to 
violations of any license, order, or regulation issued under this 
section.
                                 <all>