[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
STOPPING THE CRIME OF ORGAN HARVESTING_WHAT MORE MUST BE DONE?
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 20, 2024
__________
Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available at www.cecc.gov or www.govinfo.gov
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
55-350 WASHINGTON : 2024
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
House
Senate
CHRIS SMITH, New Jersey, Chair JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon, Co-chair
JAMES P. McGOVERN, Massachusetts STEVE DAINES, Montana
BRIAN MAST, Florida MARCO RUBIO, Florida
JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia TOM COTTON, Arkansas
MICHELLE STEEL, California ANGUS KING, Maine
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
ANDREA SALINAS, Oregon DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska
ZACHARY NUNN, Iowa SHERROD BROWN, Ohio
RYAN ZINKE, Montana LAPHONZA R. BUTLER, California
EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
DANIEL K. KRITENBRINK, Department of State
MARISA LAGO, Department of Commerce
THEA MEI LEE, Department of Labor
UZRA ZEYA, Department of State
ERIN BARCLAY, Department of State
Piero Tozzi, Staff Director
Todd Stein, Deputy Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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Statements
Opening Statement of Hon. Chris Smith, a U.S. Representative from
New Jersey; Chair, Congressional-Executive Commission on China. 1
Statement of Hon. Michelle Steel, a U.S. Representative from
California..................................................... 4
Statement of Hon. Jeff Merkley, a U.S. Senator from Oregon; Co-
chair,
Congressional-Executive Commission on China.................... 4
Statement of Ethan Gutmann, China Studies Research Fellow,
Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, and author of The
Slaughter...................................................... 7
Statement of Matthew Robertson, Doctoral Candidate, Australian
National University (Canberra), and co-author of ``Execution by
Organ Procurement: Breaching the Dead Donor Rule in China,''
American Journal of Transplantation............................ 9
Statement of Maya Mitalipova, Director, Human Stem Cell
Laboratory, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, MIT... 11
Statement of Tom Oliverson, M.D., Texas State Representative and
Chair, Insurance Committee, Texas House of Representatives..... 14
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements
Gutmann, Ethan................................................... 31
Robertson, Matthew............................................... 33
Mitalipova, Maya, Ph.D........................................... 44
Oliverson, Tom, M.D.............................................. 46
Smith, Hon. Chris................................................ 46
Merkley, Hon. Jeff............................................... 48
Submissions for the Record
Statement entitled ``EU's Responses to Forced Organ Harvesting by
the CCP and Urgent Measures To Be Taken'' by Lebin Ding, human
rights advocate and Falun Gong practitioner,................... 49
Statement of Cynthia Sun, researcher, Falun Dafa Information
Center......................................................... 53
Statement of Anne Zimmerman, J.D................................. 59
CECC Truth in Testimony Disclosure Form.......................... 71
Witness Biographies.............................................. 73
(iii)
STOPPING THE CRIME
OF ORGAN HARVESTING--
WHAT MORE MUST BE DONE?
----------
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20, 2024
Congressional-Executive
Commission on China,
Washington, DC.
The hearing was held from 10:03 a.m. to 11:46 a.m., in Room
1334, Longworth House Office Building, Representative Chris
Smith, Chair, Congressional-Executive Commission on China,
presiding.
Also present: Senator Jeff Merkley, Co-chair, and
Representatives Steel and Nunn.
STATEMENT OF HON. CHRIS SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW
JERSEY; CHAIR, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
Chair Smith. Good morning. This hearing will come to order.
It's an important hearing which addresses one of the most
persistent and horrific human rights abuses of our time, but
sadly, one which has not received widespread attention and
scrutiny and the condemnation that it absolutely deserves.
Almost 2 years ago, Sir Geoffrey Nice testified before a
hearing I chaired on forced organ harvesting at the Tom Lantos
Human Rights Commission. For those who don't know, Sir Geoffrey
was the lead prosecutor of Slobodan Milosevic at the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He
is a serious man who engaged in a serious attempt to
investigate the evidence of forced organ harvesting, as the
chair of the Independent People's Tribunal into Forced Organ
Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in the People's
Republic of China, or simply, the China Tribunal.
Sir Geoffrey summarized for us that day the final judgment
of the China Tribunal and he put it this way: ``The Tribunal
found unanimously, and sure beyond a reasonable doubt, that in
China forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has
been in practice for a substantial period of time, including a
substantial amount of victims.'' Among those victims, he said,
are most certainly the most vulnerable populations in China
today: prisoners, Falun Gong practitioners, and Uyghurs.
Forced organ harvesting on an industrial scale in China is
an atrocity unmatched in its wickedness, one we have to go back
to the horrific crimes committed in the 20th century by Hitler,
Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot to find a comparatively systematic
type of atrocity. The number of those executed for their
organs, some even before they were brain dead, is staggering.
Thus the China Tribunal final assessment was that state-
sanctioned forced organ harvesting in China amounts to ``crimes
against humanity.''
So here we are, to again contemplate--and this is the third
hearing that I have chaired on this issue--an unimaginable and
un-
acceptable crime. We're here because the Chinese communist
government is the world's largest jailer of political
prisoners, and responsible for a genocide targeting the
Uyghurs. We are here again because there are those who doubt or
ignore the Tribunal's findings, pointing to the PRC's 2015
bogus promise to only source organs from voluntary donors, even
though evidence presented by one of our witnesses here today,
Matthew Robertson, demonstrates that this data has been
falsified.
We are here again because nearly 1 year ago the House
passed the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act by an overwhelming
majority, 412 to 2. We need to see the Senate pass it, and to
do it immediately. It's been a year. With respect, I do ask
again that the Foreign Relations Committee and the full Senate
simply pass the bill. It was bipartisan. We vetted it with the
U.S. Department of State. We had tremendous input from so many,
and it is ready to become law. I hope and pray that the Senate
will move.
That landmark and bipartisan legislation authorizes the
Secretary of State to deny passports and visas to any
individual involved in illegal organ trafficking in China and
globally. It also mandates annual reporting by the State
Department on forced organ harvesting globally and authorizes
sanctions for individuals and entities that facilitate forced
organ harvesting. In December 2023, a group of civil society
groups, religious freedom advocates, trade unions, bar
associations, and human rights solidarity groups wrote to
Senator Ben Cardin and Senator Jim Risch, the chair and ranking
member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urging the
committee to pass the bill. They said the bill represented
``the strongest legislation ever introduced by any country to
combat the grotesque atrocity of illegal forced organ
harvesting.'' We await Senate action, and I am confident--
because I know Ben Cardin and others--they are very honorable
men. I am confident that they will indeed take up the bill.
Since the China Tribunal's final judgment, researchers have
continued to investigate the Chinese communist government and
do a deep dive into the data on organ harvesting. Indeed, we
will hear from two of the absolute best--Ethan Gutmann and
Matthew Robertson. All of you are tremendous leaders, but these
individuals have done amazing investigative work. It is
reliable. It is actionable. And we're so grateful to have them
here.
We will also look at how medical journals, bar
associations, human rights groups, the United Nations,
corporations, and U.S. state legislatures are grappling with
the legal, ethical, and human rights issues associated with
being complicit in forced organ harvesting. Dr. Maya Mitalipova
from MIT and Dr. Tom Oliverson, a Texas state representative
who actually wrote a law for Texas on this kind of atrocity in
terms of tourism--and I want to thank him for that leadership
which is being replicated by other states--they will discuss
what has been done and what more needs to be done to address
the PRC's transplantation abuse, including the issue of organ
tourism, which often fuels the illegal organ trafficking
market.
For more than two decades, I have tried to shed light on
forced organ harvesting in China. As a matter of fact, at one
of the hearings of my subcommittee--and this goes back to the
1990s when Harry Wu put us in touch with a police officer who
had pictures and documentation of executions that were
occurring, with the ambulances right next door, all lined up in
a queue to take those prisoners and to steal their organs
before they died. Then they had the audacity to charge the
parents or the family members, the wife or husband, for the
bullets. I mean, you talk about--well, they are just incredibly
cruel in how they mistreat people.
In the 1990s, Chinese doctors, nurses, and security guards
came forward again to describe all of this. Today, I'm
announcing an initiative to seek firsthand witnesses'
information on forced organ harvesting in China. We hope that
people will come forward and tell their stories. They will do
it anonymously, to protect their identities and those of their
loved ones. We are absolutely committed to that. We need that
information to build this case further. When we passed the bill
last March that went over to the Senate, the Chinese Embassy
here in Washington claimed it was all lies and, you know,
completely repudiated it, from their point of view.
They also said, Anybody want to come to Xinjiang, we have
nothing to hide. This was said separately, but they said it
there as well. Come on. Get your tickets and come on over. We
immediately wrote a letter to them saying I wanted to lead a
congressional delegation to Xinjiang. We have repeated that
offer over and over, and today at this hearing I'm asking the
Chinese Embassy to allow me to lead a delegation to Xinjiang
immediately. Let's work out the details.
During the worst days of the Soviet Union I went to Perm
Camp 35 with Frank Wolf, a Congressman from Virginia. It seemed
like it was mission impossible. We talked to the procurator
general for all of the Soviet Union, who said: We've got
nothing to hide. So we went to Perm Camp 35, where Natan
Sharansky and many political prisoners were, and we videotaped
every single prisoner there. We worked for their release with
very good, keen information. I hope the Chinese will
reciprocate and show a very similar openness, since they're
claiming they have nothing to hide. Well, let us come. My bags
are packed. My staff's bags are packed, and we will have a
delegation all ready to go. Just give us the green light.
Finally, I will be sending a letter to Secretary of State
Blinken asking him to offer rewards for information from
witnesses that will disrupt and deter the forced organ
harvesting industry in the PRC and bring accountability to
those engaged in this absolutely gruesome practice. The State
Department has programs offering rewards for information on
crimes against humanity and human trafficking, so this would, I
think, be a very good part of that initiative. I invite any of
my colleagues to join me in signing this letter, copies of
which are available for your consideration.
Silence is unacceptable. Silence is not an option,
particularly from medical associations and corporations. They
remain silent, but they are the most at risk of complicity in
this heinous crime against humanity. We all bear some
responsibility to act. This is an ongoing fight to demand
transparency and justice, and an end to this egregious human
rights abuse. If we don't act now, many more lives will be
lost. I can't thank our witnesses enough for being here and for
throughout the year and years being the source of so much
credible, actionable information that has informed what we do
on this Commission.
I'd like to turn to my good friend and colleague,
Commissioner Steel, for any opening comment.
STATEMENT OF MICHELLE STEEL,
A REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA
Representative Steel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, I
think this is one of the most important committees; we are here
to show the whole world what the CCP has been doing. So thank
you to the witnesses for your courage in raising awareness of
this sensitive and prolific problem. My birth parents fled from
North Korea from communism. I heard so many stories, but this
is really getting worse. The U.S. Congress must use every tool
to find evidence of organ harvesting and prevent it from
happening. So many political prisoners, including Falun Gong
practitioners, are suffering at the hands of the CCP--actually,
other communist countries are following that. I see that with
Vietnam and other communist countries.
So we must stop this. I have met with several survivors of
the CCP's internment camps that torture and enslave minorities,
including the Uyghurs, and have heard firsthand about the
horrors experienced at the hands of the CCP. In June, I sent a
letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, calling for
immediate action to prevent those who participate in the CCP's
forced organ harvesting industry from earning immigration
status in the United States. We must do whatever we can to
prevent the organ harvesting industry.
I look forward to learning more today about the steps that
we should be taking to prevent these human rights atrocities
from continuing. Thank you for coming, witnesses, and Mr.
Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing. It is very, very
important that the whole world know exactly what the CCP has
been doing to these minority communities. So thank you.
Chair Smith. Commissioner Steel, thank you so very much for
your statement and for your leadership on this Commission. It
is greatly appreciated.
I'd now like to yield to our good friend and colleague, the
co-chair of the China Commission, Senator Merkley.
STATEMENT OF JEFF MERKLEY, A SENATOR FROM OREGON AND CO-CHAIR,
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
Co-chair Merkley. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
This is an important hearing. Welcome, everyone.
The history of human rights abuse in the organ transplant
system has been a long-standing concern of this Commission. For
example, back in 2006 the Commission reported that ``executed
prisoners likely are the source of the majority of organs used
in transplant operations in China, according to reported
statements from Chinese officials and reports from U.S. human
rights organizations.'' The notion that prisoners, including
prisoners of conscience, might be executed so their organs can
be transplanted into other people, is horrific.
This is an area where we can say that international
pressure appears to have produced some results. In 2014, China
pledged to stop obtaining organs from executed prisoners and to
``ensure the voluntary donation from citizens as the sole legal
source of human organs.'' But have they done what they
promised? Many experts have cast doubt about whether China has
adhered to its pledges and abided by international standards,
and that's what we're here today to explore.
A Congressional Research Service report notes that
``Researchers on organ harvesting in China have relied largely
on circumstantial evidence, logical inferences, and interviews
to support their arguments.'' In part, this problem can be
blamed on the Chinese authorities, who make it extremely
difficult to get accurate and trustworthy data. The system is
not transparent. The Chinese government has refused to grant
independent or international investigations into its organ
transplant practices. The Chinese government has provided
information that refutes the allegations of human rights
violations.
We need facts to make assessments and formulate policy. We
must continue to demand that the Chinese government provide
more transparency so we can assess whether they are meeting
international standards, and we must take care not to let our
policy responses be based on circumstantial or outdated
evidence. Two years ago, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission
in a hearing chaired by today's chairman, Representative Smith,
addressed this topic with two of the witnesses here today. I
look forward to any new information that they have uncovered
since.
Chairman Smith is also author of the Stop Forced Organ
Harvesting Act, which passed the House a year ago. I'm a co-
sponsor of the Senate version, and I hope we can soon move it
on our side. Last, I observe that one clear action that the
Chinese government can take to provide assurances that its
institutions are not harvesting organs from executed prisoners
is to stop executing prisoners. I urge China to ratify the
second optional protocol to the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights aimed at the abolition of the death
penalty. I should note that for different but significant
reasons, the U.S. should do so as well. Thank you for being
here today for this important discussion, and I look forward to
your testimony.
Chair Smith. Thank you, Chairman Merkley.
I'd now like to introduce our distinguished witnesses. Our
first two witnesses are researchers who doggedly pursued the
subject of forced organ harvesting and are well known to this
Commission. They have both produced some of the most compelling
evidence available on forced organ harvesting in the PRC. For
that, we owe them a huge debt of gratitude. They have both
testified at hearings that I've chaired on this issue over the
years, and, Ethan, stretching back over a decade now. Both are
engaged in important research, and more of that will be
forthcoming in the coming weeks and months.
Ethan Gutmann is a China Studies Research Fellow at the
Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, cofounder of the
International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China, and
author of the seminal 2014 book ``The Slaughter: Mass Killings,
Organ Harvesting, and China's Secret Solution to Its Dissident
Problem.'' He is also coauthor of the influential 2016
investigative report ``Bloody Harvest/The Slaughter: An
Update,'' with David Matas and David Kilgour. He is currently
working on a new book based on his personal interviews with
Uyghur and Kazakh refugees throughout Central Asia, entitled
``The Xinjiang Procedure.''
Matthew Robertson, who will be joining us by way of Zoom
from Australia, is a Chinese studies research fellow in data
sciences at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a
Ph.D. candidate in political science at the Australian National
University, and an incoming postdoctoral fellow at the
University of Mannheim in Germany. Matthew is a leading expert
in organ trafficking harvesting in China and regularly gives
lectures and presentations at academic conferences, briefs
government officials, and has provided expert testimony to the
U.S. Congress and the China Tribunal. His work has been
published in peer-reviewed journals, including his
groundbreaking 2022 article, ``Execution by Organ Procurement:
Breaching the Dead Donor Rule in China.'' American Journal of
Transplantation carried that, which showed that surgeons were
being used as executioners in China.
Our third and fourth witnesses will talk about how medical
research institutions, corporations, and U.S. state
legislatures are grappling with the legal and ethical
implications of forced organ harvesting and organ tourism,
which often fuels the illegal trafficking of organs.
Dr. Maya Mitalipova is the director of the Human Stem Cell
Laboratory at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research,
MIT. She was born in Kazakhstan and was trained in genetics and
embryology at the Moscow Human Genetics Institute. Her
scientific achievements are world renowned and include animal
cloning at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and stem cell
therapy. Since joining MIT, Dr. Mitalipova has focused on the
study of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. She has also
applied her expertise to the study of DNA collection and mass
DNA sequencing in China and its implications. She has
previously contributed written testimony to the Commission with
regard to complicity with China's human rights abuses, a topic
that she will elaborate on today.
Finally, Dr. Tom Oliverson is a practicing anesthesiologist
representing Texas's 130th State house district in northwest
Harris County, including the communities of Tomball, Cypress,
Waller, and Hockley. Dr. Oliverson serves as the chair of the
House Committee on Insurance and is a member of the Public
Health and House Select Committees on Health Care Reform.
Nationally, he's president of the National Council of Insurance
Legislators. He is widely regarded as an expert on health care
policy solutions, having authored multiple groundbreaking laws
that have established Texas as a national leader in health care
reform, including a bi-
partisan law restricting state insurance payments for Texans
seeking organ transplantation in China, which is a national
model for other states to follow. And I hope my state of New
Jersey follows your lead, Doctor. I deeply appreciate that
leadership. Congratulations on that, and we look forward to
your testimony as well.
Ethan Gutmann, the floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF ETHAN GUTMANN, CHINA STUDIES RESEARCH FELLOW,
VICTIMS OF COMMUNISM MEMORIAL FOUNDATION AND AUTHOR OF THE
SLAUGHTER
Mr. Gutmann. I'll focus on recent developments today,
specifically the CCP systematic harvesting of Uyghurs and other
Turkic groups. Just as the rise of China's transplant system
was built on the persecution of Falun Gong, harvesting is now
bound to the Xinjiang camp system constructed from 2016 to
2018. Now I want to also use this as an opportunity to respond
to the CRS casting a little shade on witness statements. So,
Congressman Smith, please forgive the repetition with previous
testimony in this case, but I will go through estimates of
annual camp disappearances, particularly taking into account
the strengths and the weaknesses of refugee testimony. I will
move to a case study in Aksu, and I will conclude by describing
a shift in Western transplant surgeons' attitudes over the last
2 years, and the implications for U.S. policy.
Now let's begin with the Kazakh doctor Sayragul Sauytbay.
I'm not good with the pronunciation here. She was employed as a
Chinese language teacher and made herself useful throughout her
camp. Following a camp-wide health check--that's what they call
them--including comprehensive blood tests--Sayragul was asked
to sort out the camp's medical files. She noticed a colored
checkmark on certain files in the 23- to 35-year-old age range
based on tissue typing. From Sayragul's perspective, she only
lacked the external list of individuals who would receive the
organs. She was certain on this point.
Now several camp survivors noticed that following the blood
test results some prisoners were forced to wear colored
bracelets or vests. There was no apparent logic to the color
grouping, only that these people were in their late twenties
and they were healthy. Witness testimony is far from perfect.
Personal bias, trauma, and partisanship can influence the
results. But I don't believe these elements are distorting the
testimony here.
Let me explain why. First, every refugee was from a
different camp. There was no collusion.
Second, outside of the rape room, all 20 camps had
installed cameras and listening devices. Other than saying
something like ``pass the plunger,'' speech did not exist. In
an environment of suppressed social contact and omnipresent and
arbitrary interrogation or sexual abuse, humans compensate.
Like starving animals, hearing becomes acute. Vision sharpens.
Minute changes in their environment are keenly observed.
Third, most camp refugees I interviewed in Central Asia
were Kazakhs. With a relatively porous border and a nation-
state that occasionally lobbies China on their behalf, the
Kazakhs view themselves as accidental prisoners. They don't
like their Chinese overlords, but most Kazakhs are not loyal to
the Uyghur cause. They had no motive to manipulate numbers to
reach a particular result or to please me.
Fourth, the interviews were purposely broad. Most witnesses
had no idea that I was forming numerical estimates, and the
majority were only dimly aware of organ harvesting in the first
place.
I wish to avoid false precision here. Even my most
analytical witness, Ovalbek Turdakun, who recently escaped from
Kyrgyzstan, could never determine the exact number of detainees
in his camp. What emerged from their testimony is that there
are two kinds of people who leave the camp early. The first
group is about 18 years old on average. The announcement that
they are going to work at a factory or perhaps in a bingtuan, a
military-run cotton farm, is usually made during lunch. Light
applause is often encouraged.
Now, the second group is between 25 and 35. The average is
usually 28--this was very explicit from witness to witness--the
age the Chinese medical establishment prefers for organ
sourcing. They are removed in the middle of the night. There is
no applause. They are not to be mentioned again. There were a
couple of outlier witnesses, but 90 percent of the witnesses
were fairly consistent. 2.5 percent to 5 percent of the camp go
missing exactly this way every year.
Now I don't have a plausible alternate explanation for
this, and assuming there are one million in the camps, I
estimate 25,000 to 50,000 Uyghurs are harvested annually. Let's
go with the lower range. The Kilgour-Matas-Gutmann report of
2016 that Congressman Smith mentioned estimated China's annual
transplant volume at 60,000 to 100,000. Using the minimum
estimate, let's assume that Uyghurs and Kazakhs can be
harvested for at least two organs. That translates into a
minimum of 50,000 organ transplants. That's the lion's share of
China's annual transplant volume, and it's supplied by 25,000
dead people.
Now on the assumption that the Gulf states organ tourists
prefer Muslim donors who don't eat pork, the CCP has tried to
capitalize on the switch from Falun Gong to Uyghur sources. At
least one Chinese transplant hospital blatantly displays a
Muslim prayer room and halal canteen on the web. Yet the
logistical challenge of shifting away from the coastal area of
China to Xinjiang, 4,000 kilometers away from the hospitals
that foreign organ tourists prefer, required profusion methods
and Western technology. I'd welcome a question on that.
It also required a streamlined infrastructure, and there's
one example of that, and it's a very good one. Picture a
reeducation camp for 16,000 people. Picture a hospital, Aksu
Infection Hospital, that performs organ transplants. Picture a
second camp for 33,000 people constructed around that hospital.
And picture a large crematorium. And the fact is, in Aksu all
these structures are less than a kilometer away from each
other. Radio Free Asia reporter Gulchehra Hoja first noticed
this anomaly and witnesses can confirm it.
A Uyghur convict explained that the Aksu Infection Hospital
was originally for SARS patients. In 2013, it was repurposed as
a reeducation hospital for extreme Muslim dissidents. The
crematorium has a prominent Chinese sign. The air smells like
burnt bones. A second Uyghur male confirmed that the local
workers constantly complained about the stench. Now, it's a 20-
minute drive to Aksu airport's human organ transplant transport
channel--that's an export-only fast lane to move human organs
east. That's its only function.
First Hospital Zhejiang Province is near Shanghai--not too
far from Shanghai. And it's a designated big brother to Aksu
Infection Hospital. They report that their liver transplants
increased by 90 percent in 2017, while kidney transplants
increased by 200 percent. On March 1st, 2020, First Hospital
performed the world's first
double lung transplant on a COVID patient. This was an
advertisement to foreign organ tourists that China was still
open for business.
I'll conclude. I'm over time, and I'll conclude with
policy. Beginning in 2012, the Western transplant consensus was
not to investigate China but to engage with and lead the
Chinese transplant industry to a soft reform. This consensus,
however ineffective, acted as a brake on unified congressional
action. In 2022, the International Society of Heart and Lung
Transplantation, ISHLT, decided to impose an academic boycott
of China. The next year, the ISHLT asked me to present my
research and the research of Robertson, Lavee, Matas, and
Kilgour at their annual conference. And I did that.
Now, no transplant group has followed the ISHLT's lead at
this time, but Congress has a responsibility, I believe, to act
on an ongoing human rights catastrophe. But they must also
respond to ISHLT's courageous act. Realistically, the
infrastructure of harvesting may be too robust to save Uyghur
and Kazakh lives in the near term. Yet Congress can stop
Beijing's ongoing attempts to normalize medical deviance to
spread this practice. And the passage of the Stop Organ
Harvesting Act could galvanize the international transplant
community to stop seeing research and investigation into
Chinese harvesting as inflammatory or a deal breaker, but
instead as a quest for justice on behalf of those young men and
women whose only crime was that they were healthy.
That concludes my remarks. Thank you.
Chair Smith. Mr. Gutmann, thank you very much for that very
extensive testimony. It really does inform us, motivates us,
and I want to thank you so deeply for it.
I'd now like to ask Matthew Robertson if he could join us
from Australia.
STATEMENT OF MATTHEW ROBERTSON, DOCTORAL CANDIDATE, AUSTRALIAN
NATIONAL UNIVERSITY (CANBERRA) AND CO-AUTHOR OF ``EXECUTION BY
ORGAN PROCUREMENT: BREACHING THE DEAD DONOR RULE IN CHINA,''
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF TRANSPLANTATION
Mr. Robertson. Hello. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and ranking
members, for inviting me to testify at this important hearing,
and thank you to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation,
which has supported my research on this issue for many years.
The atrocity of forced organ harvesting in China has been
occurring for decades on a large scale, and it's claimed tens
if not hundreds of thousands of lives. It's a state-sponsored
program that has targeted political prisoners and members of
dissident groups that Beijing sees as a threat. We know this
based on evidence from China's own documents and medical
papers, on which rigorous scholarly analysis has been published
in leading academic journals, including the American Journal of
Transplantation. Anyone who doubts the evidence can consult the
work of the China Tribunal, chaired by renowned former war
crimes prosecutor Sir Geoffrey Nice. I refer to this in my
written testimony.
Beijing says it has reformed its organ transplant industry
into a purely voluntary system since 2015. But the official
data supporting this claim has been demonstrated to be
falsified. My coauthors and I published this analysis--a
forensic statistical analysis in a leading academic journal,
BMC Medical Ethics, in 2019. Given Beijing's well-documented
practices of propaganda and information control, especially
around what it deems to be sensitive issues, we have every
reason to believe that the atrocity continues today. This means
that anyone who traveled to China for a transplant organ could
unwittingly cause the murder of an innocent human being and at
the same time provide financial gain to an illicit industry
that advances Beijing's goals of eliminating its political
enemies, real or perceived.
Any institution worldwide that collaborates with this
industry would be indirectly supporting this activity,
including hospitals providing training to Chinese transplant
surgeons, universities facilitating transplant research and
knowledge transfer, and businesses supplying transplant
products and technologies. While Beijing's main target of organ
harvesting has been death row prisoners and practitioners of
Falun Gong, millions of Uyghurs are now also vulnerable to this
abuse, as you've already heard. Beijing has conducted mass
blood typing and DNA testing on vast swaths of its Uyghur
population under the banner of health checkups. There is no
institutional constraint on this data being put to predatory
uses, such as organ matching.
Today, for the first time, I can tell you about some new
evidence of these practices from internal Chinese police files.
A computational analysis of personnel records contained in the
Xinjiang police files--this is a cache of thousands of files
hacked from police computers in China by an anonymous third
party and passed exclusively to my institution, VOC. It shows
that over 200,000 of more than 500,000 persons in two counties
in Xinjiang have had their blood samples taken. There are also
numerous references throughout the file to DNA collection. As
the files end in 2018, we can assume that since then, many more
Uyghurs have been blood typed and entered into such databases.
On their own, these findings obviously cannot prove that
Uyghurs are being harvested for their organs, but blood type is
a necessary precondition to organ matching, and DNA data allows
for better organ matches. Given the PRC's history here of
killing prisoners for their organs, its collection of this
information amid this mass internment campaign should be highly
concerning. And we've heard the same evidence from two
different angles today.
So what can policymakers and lawmakers do about this? I
have a few recommendations here. I elaborate on some of them in
greater detail in my written testimony, and I'm happy to expand
on it in the Q&A. The U.S.-based consultancy Global Rights
Compliance has also published a useful legal advisory, Do No
Harm, that has detailed recommendations about cutting ties with
PRC entities engaged in this abuse. However, before even
cutting ties, there's a lot we don't know about the extent of
the complicity and the involvement of U.S. institutions in
supporting this activity in China.
To begin with, Congress could ask the National Science
Foundation and the National Institutes of Health to audit their
grant making over the past two decades to uncover any funding
that's been provided to PRC medical entities that have been
involved in the transplant industry. Before 2015, almost all
transplants in China were exclusively from prisoners. This is
even admitted to by Chinese medical leaders, so that there are
thousands--at least hundreds--of hospitals involved here. Any
of them that have failed to uphold human subject protections
should not be receiving Federal funds.
Congress could exercise its oversight powers another way.
It could call U.S. hospitals and medical centers that have
trained Chinese transplant surgeons to account. They could
gather data from those institutions and then that would build a
record of which surgeons have been trained and what they have
received training in. Then we could match that with VOC's
databases about activity in China to understand what knowledge
transfer from the United States has facilitated organ
trafficking in China.
Finally, and more aggressively, the U.S. Government could
freeze the assets of and deny visas to any PRC individuals who
have engaged in organ trafficking. We have lists of thousands
of surgeons and hundreds of hospitals from Chinese medical
databases, and these could be used to build dossiers on
perpetrators and to identify them for visa denials and asset
seizures. I'll be pleased to share this work with the
Commission upon request and correspond further. Thank you.
Chair Smith. Thank you so very much, and I do hope, God
willing, when we get this bill into law, that you would share
all of that with the U.S. Department of State and other
agencies of the U.S. Government, so that we really draw a very
focused scrutiny on this. So thank you so very much.
I'd now like to ask Dr. Mitalipova to present her
testimony.
STATEMENT OF MAYA MITALIPOVA, DIRECTOR, HUMAN STEM CELL
LABORATORY, WHITEHEAD INSTITUTE FOR BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH, MIT
Ms. Mitalipova. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to
testify today in front of you.
The Chinese government is building the world's largest DNA
database by acquiring DNA sequencing data from companies within
China and across the globe, including from the USA. A number of
biotech companies are assisting the Chinese police in building
this database. They include U.S.-based Thermo Fisher Scientific
and the Chinese company BGI, Beijing Genomics Institute. BGI in
particular is very dangerous because it collects DNA from
Americans and uses it for research with the Chinese military.
Chinese authorities are enrolling in genome surveillance
tens of millions of people in Tibet and in Xinjiang, a.k.a.
East Turkistan. Those individuals have no control over how
their samples are collected, stored, and used, and neither do
they know of the potential implications of the DNA collection
for them and for their extended families. In 2016, a biometric
data collection program was launched in Xinjiang, where data
from an estimated 15 million Uyghurs has been collected under
the guise of free annual physical exams. Note, the Han Chinese
population of the region was exempt from this program.
Despite it being a free exam, no results were returned to
these residents. Mass DNA sequencing is a costly project. The
least expensive sequencing of a small portion of DNA today can
cost $100 per sample. The sequencing of 15 million samples can
cost at least 1 to 2 billion dollars. To maintain this database
for tens of millions of samples, you need a substantial number
of professional bioinformatics specialists, specialized
computers and software, and expensive sequencing machines.
Why is the Chinese government investing billions of dollars
to sequence the DNA of the entire population of Xinjiang and
Tibet? What can DNA sequencing data be used for? DNA sequencing
can be used in basic biological research, disease discovery,
finding novel treatments, forensics, ancestry research, and in
organ transplantation. Now, let's see which of these uses can
be applied to Uyghur people in Xinjiang.
Finding disease mutation and ancestry research in the
region where the Chinese government is conducting genocide
against Uyghurs? The answer is no. The forensic investigation
on the rest of the population of Uyghurs who are not yet
detained, on people who are tightly monitored--on the margin it
can add to the cost of DNA sequencing by tightening
surveillance capacity. But the answer is no.
The only reason left for DNA use is for organ
transplantation. And yes, its use for forced organ harvesting
and transplantation can absolutely justify the enormous cost of
mass DNA sequencing. According to witnesses, authorities in
Xinjiang on a mandatory basis withdraw not only blood for DNA
but also perform ultrasound checks of all internal organs,
including an iris scan. Again, patients never receive the
results of these health checks.
China's organ transplantation industry accounts for a
minimum of 60,000 organ transplants per year. The least
expensive kidney transplant can cost around $70,000 U.S. And
some other organs can cost up to a half million dollars. In
free countries like the USA and Europe, organ donor recipients
are on a wait list for months, and some for years, for matching
donor organs, while in China, the matching donors can be found
in a few weeks. According to research conducted by Ethan
Gutmann, an estimated minimum of 25,000 Uyghurs are subjected
to forced organ harvesting per year.
For successful organ transplantation, doctors rely on
several important criteria, including three main blood tests,
cell surface tests, and limited DNA tests to determine if a
patient and a potential donor are a match. Current genetic
tests detect differences in DNA sequences at just a few
specific locations in the genome of the transplant recipient
and their organ donor. The fewer the differences are, the
better the chance for long-term acceptance of the new organ. A
whole genome sequencing data for a large number of genes would
give a better match of donor and recipient organ, which in turn
will result in no rejection, and long-term survival of the
transplanted organs.
When a patient requests an organ in China, his or her DNA
sequence data will be blasted against millions of DNA databases
stored in computers. Within a few minutes, a perfect match will
be found. If a potential donor of the organs is not in a prison
or camp, then Chinese authorities can easily find a reason to
detain a match to be killed for their organs on demand.
This is one and maybe the main reason why the Chinese
government invested billions of dollars in DNA sequencing of
the entire population of Xinjiang and Tibet, because it will
make exponentially many more billions of dollars per year in
return. Thermo Fisher's involvement in forced organ harvesting
in Xinjiang is undeniable. But while it has vowed to stop
selling sequencing machines to the region and to stop providing
technical support to maintain them, the company is very
successfully selling HLA kits and other custom-made DNA
profiling products for organ transplantation, as high as in the
10 million range.
The continued sale of DNA profiling products and
technologies by Thermo Fisher to China has to be stopped by
Congress. It's time for the U.S. Congress to pass the bill
introduced by Senator Hagerty and Senator Peters, the
Prohibiting Foreign Access to American Genetic Information Act
of 2024. This legislation will help to protect sensitive genome
data of Americans from being used by foreign governments like
China, whose business practices threaten U.S. national
security.
There is also growing evidence that academic research
universities and publishers across the globe, and in particular
the U.S., are complicit in aiding in the use of genetic
technologies to surveil minority groups--Uyghurs and Tibetans
in China. Professor Moreau and his colleagues warned scientific
publisher PLOS, based in San Francisco, of 96 published
research papers--that these papers hold sensitive genome data
of minority ethnic groups. Only 12 of the 96 flagged papers
have been retracted so far.
Ethical concerns go beyond scientific publication. Data
collection from these publications is commonly deposited into
genetic databases, which are a resource not only for medical
researchers and population geneticists, but in some cases, law
enforcement agencies. I ask Congress to take action to restrict
U.S. academic research universities and scientific publishers
from sharing any technologies with Chinese companies and the
Chinese government, like BGI.
I urge Congress to question and, if necessary, to sanction
Thermo Fisher for aiding China in the genocide of innocent
Uyghur and Tibetan people and prisoners of conscience
throughout mainland China. Thank you so much.
Chair Smith. Doctor, thank you very much for your
testimony. A number of very important recommendations for us
that we will follow up on. I thank you for that.
And it is now my privilege to introduce Dr. Tom Oliverson
from Texas.
STATEMENT OF TOM OLIVERSON, M.D., TEXAS STATE REPRESENTATIVE
AND CHAIR, INSURANCE COMMITTEE, TEXAS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Dr. Oliverson. Good morning, Chair Smith, Chair Merkley,
and members of the Commission. My name is Tom Oliverson, and
I'm a board-certified anesthesiologist and Texas state
representative, where I chair the House Committee on Insurance.
Thank you for allowing me the honor to speak with you today
about what Texas has done to combat the horrific practice of
forced organ harvesting.
I first became aware of the horrors of forced organ
harvesting through the advocacy efforts of the Southern USA
Falun Dafa Association. Through the examples and eyewitness
testimony that they provided, I became aware of the horrific
persecution faced by Falun Gong practitioners in China. Around
the same time, I met with members of the Chinese Uyghur
community through the advocacy work of the Minaret Foundation.
A pattern of religious persecution, incarceration, and
execution for government profit became clear.
With the help of these organizations and the Victims of
Communism Memorial Foundation, my colleagues and I have worked
for several years to honor the victims of communism and
advocate for justice for the victims of forced organ
harvesting. In 2021, I joint-authored a resolution condemning
China for their forced organ harvesting practices, and through
separate legislation created the Victims of Communism Memorial
Day in Texas. This past year, we approved the creation of a
victims of communism monument at the Texas Capitol, the first
of its kind at a state capitol, and had our most significant
achievement to date, the passage of Senate Bill 1040.
Senate Bill 1040, by Senator Lois Kolkhorst and myself, is
an attempt to choke off the demand for stolen organs, since in
Texas, obviously, we can't affect the supply. We're attacking
the demand by prohibiting health benefit plan issuers in Texas
from providing coverage for medical and surgical treatments
associated with organ transplants performed in China, or in
another country known to participate in forced organ
harvesting. While Texas's jurisdiction may be limited, Senate
Bill 1040 works precisely because solid organ transplantation
surgery and the medical aftercare associated with it is so
prohibitively expensive that most Texans could not afford such
care without insurance coverage and if you ask any insurer,
they will likely tell you that this group of medical and
surgical costs are the most expensive of all care subsets that
they cover.
As Senate Bill 1040 was working its way through the
legislative process, we were able to hold a press conference to
allow those impacted by forced organ harvesting to share their
stories. I believe these firsthand accounts were the reason
that we were able to pass this bill with the overwhelming
bipartisan majority that we did. We had several survivors of
Chinese detention camps share their powerful stories with us.
They told us about the daily horrors of being a religious and
political prisoner, and about those in the camps who would
suddenly disappear, never to be seen again. They spoke of
undergoing a series of medical tests, not for their benefit but
rather to assess their overall health and tissue type. They
shared that, because of their healthy lifestyles and abstinence
from alcohol, Falun Gong practitioners and Uyghurs were the
most often targeted groups.
Bills modeled after Senate Bill 1040 have already been
heard in the Arizona House and the Utah Senate, where they have
successfully passed the committee stage. A similar bill in the
Missouri House recently received a hearing, and Idaho and
Illinois are in the process of passing similar legislation.
Senate Bill 1040 sets a crucial precedent, but it has
limitations. In my home state of Texas, only about 15 percent
of all issued health plans are subject to state regulation. The
rest are federally preempted and regulated by ERISA.
This, I hope and pray, is where Members of Congress like
yourselves come in. Passage of legislation, like Senate Bill
1040, at the Federal level would massively expand the number of
health plans subject to this bipartisan human rights protection
and strike a huge blow to the inhumane practice of organ
harvesting. I'm immensely proud that the work that we started
in Texas is being modeled in other states. I'm so thankful for
the work that is being done by this Commission to force the
conversation at a national level.
I firmly believe that passing this sort of legislation at
the Federal level will ensure a future free from the scourge of
forced organ harvesting. Thank you for your time today.
Chair Smith. Dr. Oliverson, thank you for your leadership,
for getting a bill that has become the prototype and the
pioneering law for all of us to follow. Thank you for that
leadership. It's extra-
ordinary. Also, since you are, on the national level, the head
of the insurance initiative for lawmakers, others will pick it
up. I include my own state of New Jersey in that.
Chair Merkley does have to return to the Senate. He was
coming in late because they had a vote and has to go back. I
really appreciate him coming across to the House side. I yield
to him such time as he would like.
Co-chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and
thank you all.
Mr. Gutmann, the implication of your testimony is that the
individuals, the Falun Gong or Uyghurs who are disappearing,
are not returning. Is that my correct reading of your
testimony, that your assumption is that they are being
executed?
Mr. Gutmann. The assumption is with the Uyghurs, at least,
that they're being transported in some state, sort of suspended
animation, to the east coast for harvesting.
Co-chair Merkley. In the New York Times this last week,
there was an article regarding Afghanistan and people in dire
conditions selling their organs, but they were basically
selling one kidney. I'm not sure if they were also selling
their livers or not, but the kidneys were highlighted. In that
case, there are lots of folks who can be interviewed who sold
an organ, but we're not seeing that in China? We're not seeing
people--was it reinforcing the sense that people are being
executed; you don't see people who have sold an organ?
Mr. Gutmann. Well, I think that certainly--a lot of things
are possible in China. There's all kinds of business that takes
place, especially in the kind of gray market--not black market,
but kind of gray market in between the white market and the
black market. I would say this: what we've seen is a massive
growth--I think certainly my colleague Matthew Robertson would
have something to say on this as well--hearts and lungs,
particularly lungs. There's a very dramatic growth, so China
has surpassed the kidney stage on this, quite a while ago
actually, and they are the leader in heart transplant
operations in the world today, certainly.
Co-chair Merkley. And the assumption in Afghanistan is that
the organs are supplying a market, perhaps in Herat. It did
raise in my mind the question, and I'll ask this of anyone on
the panel who has insight on this, as to whether China is also
supplementing the organ supply by flying in organs from other
countries. Does anyone have any insight on that?
Mr. Gutmann. I have never seen good, solid evidence that
they are flying organs out from China. It is perfectly possible
from the site I mentioned, from Aksu, you can get a medium-
range airplane to fly to Saudi Arabia, for example. That would
be possible, but I've never seen the evidence. I've also heard
of the military supplying the Japanese off the coast, and
submarines, and so forth, but there's absolutely no critical
evidence on that, not a witness, not anything we found.
Co-chair Merkley. The weight of the evidence is the organs
are all coming internally? The vast majority?
Mr. Gutmann. Yes.
Co-chair Merkley. Well, thank you all very much for your
testimony, and what a profoundly troubling situation that
people are being executed--identified by their DNA, by their
blood type, systematically accounting for that, being matched
and supplied--kind of executed on demand--to both folks
internal to China and tourists coming in for the organ tourist
business. Thank you all for this very powerful testimony.
Chair Smith. Thank you, Senator.
I'd like to, Mr. Gutmann, thank you again for your
leadership, which informs this Commission and, I think, the
whole world on this issue. You did point out that on the
assumption that the Gulf states organ tourists prefer Muslim
donors who don't eat pork, the CCP has tried to capitalize on
the switch from Falun Gong to Uyghur sources. At least one
Chinese transplant hospital blatantly displays its Muslim
prayer room on the web. Yet the logistical challenge of
shifting from the coastal area to Xinjiang, 4,000 kilometers
away from the hospitals that organ tourists prefer, requires
profusion methods and Western technology.
Could you maybe elaborate on that? Because that is really--
I mean, we've been trying to figure out why Falun Gong--I mean,
they're still murdering thousands of Falun Gong practitioners
and stealing their organs. Part of our thought was, Well, maybe
they're running out of 28-year-olds, and that's, you know----
Mr. Gutmann. Running out of what?
Chair Smith. Twenty-eight-year-old victims; they're looking
for others. But this adds another dimension to it, that they're
looking to kill other Muslims in order to procure their organs.
Mr. Gutmann. The evidence is that in 2013 they started
running out of Falun Gong organs. The reason we know that is
because they started to visit Falun Gong in their homes, in
fact, to do a DNA cheek swab--it was a primitive DNA test--and
blood tests in their homes. These were people who were not
incarcerated. This was very unusual, and it happened in, I
believe, six provinces simultaneously. Now, in 2014, that's
when the mass health checks of the Uyghurs began, so it seems
to me that they were looking for another source at that point.
To really--and I'll make this very quick--what happened was
that Dr. Ko Wen-je in Taiwan had pioneered a new method of live
organ harvesting that would preserve organs very well, and he
was doing this in a kind of gray area legal zone in Taiwan. He
then went on to push it. He became a salesman for Medtronic,
which is an American company. I think you guys are familiar
with that. Medtronic makes ECMO, this oxygenation system, and
there was a second off-label use that had been identified about
2008, when he gave a major talk at a conference in China, and
that was on organ preservation. You could increase organ
viability from, say, 4 hours to 16.
The Medtronic device--ECMO device--is too large. It's a big
machine. They needed a mobile machine. There was a German
company--there's still a German company--named Hemovent--I'm
not sure I'm pronouncing that correctly, but they made a
miniaturized, portable version of an ECMO machine. Beginning in
2017, Hemovent auctioned their devices to China on a mass
scale. Now, we've looked at the actual auction records and 50
percent of those hospitals are the transplant hospitals that we
identified in our 2016 report as very likely organ harvesting
centers.
In June 2019--here's another clue for you all--sales of
ECMO machines stop and they're replaced by ventilators. Now
that may have been an early outbreak of COVID. On its own, it's
just one piece of data, but I think the important point is
that--what is not speculative here is that Hemovent was sold to
the Chinese company MicroPort in October 2021 for 123 million
euros, so this is obviously a very valuable technology. I'm
sure the Chinese have reverse-engineered it by now. But you can
see how Western technology moved into this gap in China and
helped to make the harvesting of Uyghurs profitable.
Chair Smith. Do you want to speak to that, Dr. Mitalipova?
Ms. Mitalipova. Yes. I just want to add that the
technologies are developing day by day and month by month, and
those technologies can be applied to evil practices like forced
organ harvesting. Internal transfer of the organs right now I
think is not an issue because if you oxygenate the organs you
can transfer them not only within China but maybe to a
neighboring country, where they actually train the medical
doctors and surgeons. And now I think they started training
them in Central Asia, like in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, so
it's kind of a warning sign when China starts training medical
personnel on this particular technology.
Chair Smith. Can I ask you, does anybody know when a victim
is brought into the hospital to have their organs stolen and
then die, are they aware of it? How much pain--we know the
psychological pain could be beyond words, but do they
experience physical pain? The doctor that testified at our last
hearing said his victim wasn't even anesthetized correctly and
was in shock and was awakened as this gruesome Josef Mengele-
like process was occurring. I'm wondering if, as an
anesthesiologist, Dr. Oliverson, you might want to speak to
this as well. How do they get them--do they drug them as soon
as they take them away from the camp, that up to 5 percent, as
you mentioned, Mr. Gutmann? Do they know where they're going?
Mr. Gutmann. I think there's a lot of very sketchy evidence
on this, but it is true that initially Falun Gong practitioners
who were coming in from the camps made this claim that they
were using low anesthesia to save money--to make it even more
profitable. There is at least some, as I say, sketchy evidence,
because some of the stories that come out are kind of
outrageous and are seemingly told backwards, in other words,
the way witnesses sometimes tell stories. Having said that,
Enver Tohti, the doctor who performed live organ harvesting on
a living human being, made the point that if you don't use
enough anesthesia it is like, he said, you cannot cut a rabbit
up even if you have four men holding the rabbit down. So he
feels this is impossible. So I think it's mixed on that.
I would imagine that what we're looking at is a very
sophisticated operation today in Xinjiang, East Turkistan. And
basically, you are looking at an entire people being moved.
Now, normally ECMO saves lives in the West precisely because
you can move a very sick person from place to place. It is very
useful for organ harvesting because you can remove one organ,
one kidney, one liver, and then still go back home. After 6
hours everybody can take a break and then come back to it. As
long as that heart is still beating, the organs are oxygenated.
Now, this is very valuable.
In the Chinese context, it's very sinister. It means,
basically, that the PSB, the Public Security Bureau of China,
does not want to take living people or people who are not in
some sort of state of suspended animation. I don't know how
else to describe it because I'm not a doctor, but to put them
on a plane, and in the hold, and move them. Now, this has been
verified by at least one doctor in Taiwan who works on the
mainland on a continuous basis, that that is pretty much how he
thinks it is done, though he believes it's possible to move
individual organs in a kind of oxygenated form as well.
Chair Smith. Dr. Oliverson, what about at the Federal
level? Obviously we've got Medicare, we've got other kinds of
insurance, Obamacare. Is there a place for us to be doing
something vis-a-vis Federal insurance policies, health
policies?
Dr. Oliverson. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I think that any type of
insurance product, reimbursement system, that would allow a
patient to engage in medical tourism--to be clear, not all
medical tourism is bad, per se. But any situation where a
person could go overseas to China and receive organ
transplantation and care thereafter and be reimbursed for that
or have that bill paid, that's what we shut off in the state of
Texas. And so I'm not familiar enough with CMS rules, if it
would cover a procedure performed on a Federal health insurance
product overseas, but assuming that it would, and it could,
then yes, sir, I think that should obviously be included.
Chair Smith. That would also include those reimbursable
through tax credit policy that we have in abundance here as
well, so we will follow up on that. Again, your law is
inspiring not just other states, but a Federal look that's
going to bear fruit, I believe.
You know, one other question to Ethan Gutmann, and then
I'll go to my good friend and colleague. You pointed out that
in 2022 the International Society of Heart and Lung
Transplantation imposed an academic boycott. What are the other
groups, if you are aware of them, that have not, and what does
that actually mean? Is it robust? Is it, you know, they just
don't deal with them, or are they bringing some light and
scrutiny to this ongoing, terrible abuse?
Mr. Gutmann. I'm sorry. I didn't really fully understand
the question.
Chair Smith. The Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation
boycott, the academic boycott.
Mr. Gutmann. Oh, I see. Yes.
Chair Smith. Exactly what does that really mean? Also, some
of the others that should be doing this, who are they and why
aren't they?
Mr. Gutmann. What it means? I mean, it's actually pretty
important, because it basically means they cannot publish in
our journals or in the journal of the International Society for
Heart and Lung Transplantation, which is probably the most
important transplant journal in the world today, arguably. So
that's significant. It means that they won't attend conferences
in China. In fact, when I spoke in Denver last year, two
Chinese surgeons had slipped into a crowd of 3,600 surgeons.
They hired a bodyguard in case, I guess, they were going to
take a blow dart and fire it at me or something. Instead, they
just stormed out in the middle of my speech, which is sort of
standard behavior.
But the point is that I think it's very significant.
There's a huge loss of--look, part of this is about hitting
China in the purse, and obviously we've all been talking about
that and I think that's very important--but part of this is
about face and the International Society for Heart and Lung
Transplantation has withdrawn any possibility of the Chinese--
you know, they've said: Look, if you can give us evidence, if
we can go on the ground and verify it, we'll do that, we'll
pull the academic boycott, but until then, it remains in
effect. They've held to that this year, as I understand it.
They're having a big meeting in Prague, I think, right now. I
think that's significant.
The other groups have not joined them. There are a lot of
different transplant groups, but certainly, of course, the
Transplantation Society, you're very familiar with because
you've talked to the main guy, one of the presidents there.
What we've gotten from them is silence--ever since the Uyghur
business began. They used to carry Beijing's water--give us
Beijing talking points. They don't do that anymore, and so it's
an interesting effect. We don't know.
Jacob Lavee, the Israeli doctor who changed Israel's
policy, particularly on insurance--HMO insurance to go to China
for transplants--he's on the ethics committee of ISHLT and he
really pushed this through. It really comes down to him. He's a
hero for doing that, but as he says, right now, the ISHLT is in
a state of ``brilliant isolation,'' so that is where we stand.
That's why I tried to make a point of looking to the political
system here to kind of stand with them at this time, because I
think that's such a significant change in the medical
community.
Chair Smith. Mr. Robertson, did you want to weigh in on
that?
Mr. Robertson. Yes. There's something to say about, for
instance, the Transplantation Society. It has had a very
different perspective from ISHLT for these many years and so
the current president of the TTS, I mean, he has personally
worked with Chinese surgeons who have been among the most
egregious in their abuses, and some of them have circulated
through institutions that he was at, like the Cleveland Clinic
in the United States, so they basically believe that China has
reformed its transplant system, and they seem to think that
whatever abuses may have happened in the past, number one,
they're not that curious about what the nature of them was.
Number two, they think they've all been cleaned up.
And the TTS is the global professional body for
transplantation, not just heart or a particular subfield, so
the leadership there influences the views of the larger
international body of transplant professionals, and even the
wider medical groups. So that's why ISHLT's stand here is so
much more impressive, because they've looked at the evidence
very closely and made a determination, and hopefully those
other groups will come along.
Part of my recommendations about looking into what
institutions in the United States have trained Chinese surgeons
and getting accountability over that, and investigating the
funding, is--it's part of a deterrent effect to kind of join
the more isolationist camp and put some teeth into these
policies. Because otherwise, there's no social cost for these
surgeons, because they don't get negative attention from the
media or the major human rights groups. They don't have a cost
to this and they've been friends with these Chinese surgeons
engaged in these activities for a long time, so they just don't
have an incentive to change their policy at the moment.
Chair Smith. Thank you very much. You know, the End Organ
Harvesting Act will help not only sanction those who are
committing these horrific crimes, but it'll also empower the
State Department to do robust reporting in a way that will be
very similar to what we do on human trafficking, religious
freedom. So it will make a difference and people will no longer
be able to say, Oh, I didn't know.
Michelle Steel, our commissioner from California.
Representative Steel. Thank you so much, Chairman. This is
very, very important. It's not just in the United States. We
are making sure that our citizens are aware of what the CCP's
been doing in China, especially when you're hearing the CCP
saying that organ harvesting is a voluntary system. That's just
totally nonsense and we all know it.
I think the whole world has to know that what's going on
inside of China, that's going to open up other communist
countries such as Vietnam and other areas, because they're so
closed. We don't even know what's going on in those prisons and
what these people are doing. I sent a letter out to 17 of the
Olympic corporate sponsors before the Beijing Olympics, and I
asked them, since they were spending billions and billions of
dollars on advertising, can we spare some of the money to let
people in the world know what the CCP has been doing, not just
organ harvesting but other stuff too. But you know what?
Seventeen companies, I never even got one answer.
So for them, profit is more important than human rights.
It's really sad to see that we are not going in the right
direction. How can government and nongovernmental medical
organizations work together to raise awareness? What tools are
needed to stop this in the world and what do we have to do?
Because we must work together. Not just the United States but
the whole world has to work together. So if any witnesses would
like to answer these questions----
Ms. Mitalipova. I would say the universities that develop
the technologies. There's such a different range of
technologies that can be used for the practice of organ
transplantation in the medical field, and so many technologies
are shared.
I would say programs at the universities like Confucius
Institutes, or the Thousand Talents program that they have
launched to specifically fund the professors. And it's in any
field, and especially in the field of science, like chemists,
and biologists, and so on. They have done it by giving grants
to these professors and training their scientists. Science is
international, and you can't really discriminate against a
Chinese scientist. I work with Chinese scientists. They're
great, my colleagues, you know, and I know they want to do
science for humanity and it probably doesn't even cross their
mind to do something else. But their government, you know,
censors them, and I don't know if they are even aware of those
professors in the United States who are working on the Thousand
Talents program, and been funded. You know how it goes, that
you have access to internal university services, and where the
IP is, where the intellectual property office is.
And when you are beyond the firewall of the university,
it's stealing those technologies, and those technologies that
have been developed with the tax money of the American people.
We, as scientists are developing these technologies. But the
U.S. Government has to look into--we closed quite a lot of
Confucius Institutes, created under the guise that there would
be a cultural exchange and so on and so on. But those were
propaganda--CCP propaganda institutes.
Representative Steel. I'll reclaim my time.
Ms. Mitalipova. Oh, sure.
Representative Steel. Thank you very much. I'm on the Ways
and Means Committee and I'm on the Education Committee. My
Deterrent Act just passed. The Chinese government actually
pours money, over $200 million, into UC Berkeley in California,
my state. And UC Berkeley never reported. They brought Chinese
officials and researchers to their really sensitive research
center, and they did a tour and they received the money. My
Deterrent Act passed, so anything they received from China,
Iran, or those countries of concern--even coffee--they have to
report to the department what they're receiving, because it's
getting really dangerous. It's not just for China, but all
these pro-Hamas, and terrorists too. Qatar was putting in a lot
of money. We see that, and we are looking into those
universities, so I totally agree with you.
Second, the question that you were talking about--we have
to stop involuntary collection of medical and DNA information
in American companies. You're talking about the CCP stealing
our data to send to BGI and use those data, for what? And how
can we stop here? Is it going to be helpful to stop organ
harvesting?
Ms. Mitalipova. The BGI is run by the CCP. I don't think
there's any question about that, but the Beijing Genomic
Institute, by itself, really hasn't developed any technologists
in DNA sequencing. What they have been doing, the Chinese
government pays money to acquire a lot of companies, small or
big. They couldn't acquire Illumina, as far as I know, but
there are lots of small companies in the United States they
acquired--they bought--literally bought it.
Once they buy these companies, like 23andMe, and we
submitted--a lot of Americans submitted their DNA information,
and how it can be used in the future when the technologies will
develop--we don't know what technologies--and the technologies
are developing. You know, what can they be used for? We call
the 21st century the century of biotechnology. The medical
fields have developed, and that's how we have improved human
health, and the average lifespan has increased, especially in
Western countries, because those technologies have been
developed.
When it comes to the CCP, when they hold that genetic
information of Americans, that is private information. Of
course, they might not create some bioweapon, per se; they tell
me probably it's impossible at this moment. But what they can
do is jeopardize somebody's private information about carrying
a mutation. Let's say somebody in Congress had submitted to
23andMe to find out some of their mutations or something, or
even where their ancestors come from. That information right
now is in the hands of the CCP, literally, if BGI had acquired
this.
How can this be used? They can actually, just knowing about
some disease mutation that somebody in power in the United
States or a decisionmaker in Congress might have--that
information could be used by the Chinese government to
jeopardize that person, perhaps with information. Maybe in an
election. Or let's say, like, you know, they had a child
outside of marriage. You know, they could blackmail them--this
information is so private and sensitive.
I can't believe that companies like 23andMe, or any other
DNA companies, can actually sell all our personal data. It's
almost like my passport or my credit card was sold to China and
they now know everything about me, including my home address,
and everything--even my kids and grandchildren wouldn't be safe
because I share my DNA with them.
Representative Steel. Thank you so much. My time is up. Mr.
Chairman, I yield back.
Ms. Mitalipova. I think it is so important that the
government take care of this.
Chair Smith. Commissioner Nunn is recognized.
Representative Nunn. Well, thank you very much,
Commissioner. I want to compliment Commissioner Steel. Ma'am,
do you have any follow-up that you wanted to take on that? I
didn't want to cut into your time, if you've got a follow-on.
Representative Steel. I have actually so many questions
regarding this. And, you know what, I'm so very interested in
this. Organ harvesting is an awful thing. This should just
stop. And not just in our Commission do we have to do it, but
we have to do it all over the world. We have to stop the CCP--
you know, these are innocent people's organs--we really have to
stop it. I am just so frustrated. We've known about this issue
for the last 30 years and we really have to do something more
than just the hearing here. The whole world has to work
together to stop these horrific things. Thank you very much for
giving me a little more time.
Representative Nunn. Thanks, Commissioner Steel.
Well, I first want to begin by thanking the panel. I want
to thank Chairman Smith for leading what is absolutely a
difficult conversation to have, but it's also an important
conversation to have with the American people, one that too
often we see in this bipartisan, bicameral committee really
examining the autocracy that is happening within the Chinese
Communist Party today. For years, the U.S. has heard rumors of
the nonconsensual transplanting of human organs, otherwise
known as organ harvesting, happening inside communist China. I
can think of no act more heinous than taking a political
prisoner, strapping them to a medical bed, and stealing their
body parts from the inside out, and then launching those on a
black market--or, worse, the type of genetic analysis that
we're talking about today.
As you can see behind me, though, this is not a sci-fi
movie. This is not written from a horror book. This is
happening right now, today, in the most populous country in the
world. Those who have repeatedly been persecuted, the Uyghurs,
Falun Gong, and detainees are oftentimes the subject of these
heinous crimes. But they are not alone. It is expansive and it
is routine throughout China. In 2006, independent reports
alleged that tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners in
the reeducation through labor detention facilities in China
were victims of organ harvesting while they were still alive,
but which ultimately resulted in their death.
Independent reports have also shown that nearly 25,000
Uyghurs were the victims of organ harvesting every single year.
The madness, the wholesale slaughter of a population, has to
stop, particularly when it's used under the guise of doing
science. I applaud Chairman Smith for his leadership on this
and for the difficult issues that he continues to bring forward
with this Commission but, most importantly, for those who
cannot defend themselves.
With our witnesses today, I'd like to begin with Ethan
Gutmann. You're a Chinese Studies fellow/researcher. You've
helped lead at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
We'll begin with looking inward. Have Western corporations been
complicit in the oppression of Uyghurs and Falun Gong members
here in the United States or been co-opted as agents of
communist China in their endeavors?
Mr. Gutmann. I'm going to--I think Maya might have more to
say on that question than me, so I'd hand it over to her. I
just mentioned the Medtronic ECMO connection, which I think was
significant. Let's put it this way: before ECMO--Medtronic-
ECMO, got involved, you could maybe do one or two organs from a
human being and get away with it, keep them fresh and get them
to the right places. This is also something Didi Kirsten Tatlow
from the New York Times looked at very closely, the logistics
of it.
After ECMO, it became possible to harvest as many as four
healthy organs from a single person. Suddenly turning a person
from $100,000 into half a million dollars or more from foreign
organ tourists. This is a dramatic difference. It became an
incentive to harvest Falun Gong. It improved the chances that
you'd make real money.
Ms. Mitalipova. I think transplant technologies and medical
practice has been--really progressed over the years, especially
in the 1990s and 2000s, in organ transplantation. The organ
transplant only can develop if the organs are accepted by the
recipient. This is not just DNA sequencing, but it's a lot of
blood tests and HLA, as they call it, a specific antigen on the
surface of the cells and the organs as well, that has to match
with the donor. Now I think the technology is HLA typing. So
now the matching donor and recipient are a match, and they can.
After organ transplant care--immunosuppressant drugs--all
of those have been developed really well. The first 2 years
after organ transplant, there was up to a 60 percent rejection
rate before; right now that's decreasing because of the post-
transplant care that has been developed. The medical field
has--the scientists worked on it. I think the immunosuppressant
drugs help. The DNA sequencing comes into that, because the
more the genes can be sequenced, the less differences between
the donor and the recipient in the genome, the better the
outcome that that organ will live not just 10 years. It can
live in that recipient for 20 to 30. You really prolong the
transplanted organ life in the recipient by DNA sequencing.
Representative Nunn. So is it fair to say, Dr. Mitalipova,
that not only is China working to develop an exploitation and
long-term facilitation of organs for profit, but that DNA
sequencing on the front end, making sure that that organ is
capable to be transferred, is a huge part of the business
model, if you will, of how this is done?
I'd like to talk with Matthew Robertson here. I know you're
coming in from Australia to us. Mr. Robertson, you're working
on a number of studies, your most recent being ``Execution by
Organ Procurement.'' We just talked about DNA here. You
documented through the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in
2020 that the Chinese authorities have been building a DNA
database largely of the male population. We have some folks in
the audience here in Washington who are still looking for
family members associated with this. Is it fair to say not only
is this the largest police-run DNA database in the world, but
that there is a concerted effort to identify and track all men
in the country in this type of roundup?
Mr. Robertson. Thank you for your question. The scale of
that program is very extensive. It was almost not known about
until an enterprising investigator (not myself) began looking,
on a large scale, at Chinese media reports. It's unclear what
the purpose of that was. It does appear to have been a campaign
to gather DNA data on males across the country. The connection
with that and the organ trade is unclear. It's not clear that
there is any connection.
I want to touch on a point that you made about the
complicity of Western corporations with this industry in China.
I think it's fair to say that Western companies and
institutions--health care, hospitals, medical centers--have
been instrumental in the rise of China's organ transplantation
industry. I can just give you a couple of examples. Roche, it's
a Swiss company. It has a U.S. financial presence. They built
the first organ registry for the PLA in the early 2000s. Some
of the other drug companies have been sponsors of the Chinese
official transplant associations and they've funded research by
Chinese surgeons during a time when there were no voluntary
transplants.
And this is not even to mention extensive training. At
least hundreds of Chinese surgeons who have engaged in organ
trafficking have been trained in the United States. The Chinese
transplant industry simply could not have capitalized on the
incarcerated population of political prisoners without gaining
the know-how from the West. This is something that has already
happened, and we need to study it, investigate it, understand,
actually, the dimensions of that contact. But there could still
be ongoing ties, money being made, and things that can be done
now. So I think the first step is understanding what has
happened and then stopping it to the extent that it continues.
Representative Nunn. Mr. Robertson, if such an
investigation were to be taken, particularly into how the West
has intentionally or unintentionally emboldened the harvesting
of organs from China, would you have recommendations for this
Commission that we could take for both the investigation piece
and to be able to do that fact-finding mission, as you've done
on the DNA side?
Mr. Robertson. Yes. One idea, just a starter, is an audit
of what the NSF and NIH have funded and whether money has gone,
as subgrantee, probably not as the principal awardee, but as
sub-awardee, to any of the many hundreds, nearly 1,000
hospitals, in China that have engaged in organ trafficking.
These are some of the biggest hospitals in China, biggest
health care centers. It would be almost surprising if NIH money
has not gone to them. So that should be accounted for.
There's also going to be training at taxpayer-funded
medical centers across the United States. The Cleveland Clinic
is certainly one. Now, some of these are going to be private
and some of them are going to be public, but there may be
record requests that could be lodged with these institutions.
Congress could put some muscle behind getting them to look
through their databases, because they'll have this information
in an archive somewhere about who has come from China and
received what training. And so, as part of an investigation
that can be put together with our data sets of transplant
surgeons and entities in China, from this data set of medical
publication and our cache of surgeon biographies.
So we could put together on the U.S. side--when they came,
what training they received, and then their activities in
China--what transplants they participated in prior to 2015,
let's say. Then you could get a picture of what the complicity
of U.S. institutions has been, but there's much more. There's
visa bans. I mean, the most provocative suggestion I've made is
actually using the SDN list. The same way that Iranian nuclear
physicists are treated, where there's just no financial ties,
no U.S. ties at all, no export controls, the works. The blocked
persons list.
That would be the most stringent or extreme response that
the U.S. Government could engage in. But if we're going to buy
the story that's being told here about the gravity of these
abuses, that would seem perfectly warranted. I understand that
would be a huge process, but certainly, I think it'd be worth
considering. And in principle, there's nothing preventing the
U.S. Government from doing that if it so wished.
Representative Nunn. You've laid out a compendium, I think,
that we should all look at. I'd ask the rest of the panel--I
mean, things that are immediately concerning are one, that we
have U.S. taxpayer dollars knowingly going to potentially
thousands of hospitals inside China that would be harvesting
these organs. I think, second, it's safe to say that it's not
just China that is benefiting from this practice. We have seen
time and time again that others, particularly those in the
West, are benefiting from this harvesting of organs. And three,
to your point, that the facilities and the medical
professionals who have been trained here in the West under the
aegis of the medical code and Hippocratic Oath, are then being
used as instruments of either the state or with knowing
negligence to then harvest their fellow countrymen, is beyond
the pale.
I would like to open it up to the panel. Are there other
recommendations that you would have here, either on the DNA
mapping program that China is undertaking, or, two, in holding
the actual institutions accountable within China who are doing
this harvesting? What can we do on this side of the Pacific?
Mr. Gutmann. I'm going to make a very quick suggestion on
this. One thing I wanted to mention, just very quickly, was
that Matthew talked about Roche, and, you know, it's
interesting that Roche was testing its immunosuppressive drugs
in China. It was using China as a very cheap place to do that
kind of testing. Got a big population of people who received an
organ, but those organs were from Falun Gong, in some cases,
undoubtedly, especially at that time when Roche was doing this
in the early 2000s. It is also true that Pfizer got involved in
that as well. Pfizer did testing in China. They seemed to
truncate their testing program, or at least try to do it as
quickly as possible, because it was a controversial idea at
that time, since 2007, something like that. But I think it's
really worth looking at the immunosuppressive industry because
this is--people were killed to allow other people to test in
China. I think that's a really unethical idea.
I'd mention one other thing. I don't know how this falls
into a category of how American policy could affect it, but
that's for you guys to figure out, to some extent. A real
problem of the spillover from China--and I get this from David
Matas--he says, in Busan, Korea at a symposium in November
2022, the first Asian Organ Donor Donation International
Symposium--this was Korea, China, and Japan. I've looked at the
records for that, and a couple of the speakers talk about
replicating the Euro transplant system. That is to say, a
cross-border allocation of organ donations. The speakers showed
absolutely no awareness that such a system would mean the
allocation to Japan and Korea of organs sourced from prisoners
of conscience in China, killed for their organs.
This is a classic case of, as I say, the normalization of
deviance. It's exactly what China wants. Their system of
reform, that they have always touted, has really been about
that. It's about--it's not about reforming themselves--it's
about putting these systems in so that other people are doing
them too so the Chinese will feel okay about it. Or whatever.
The evidence is going that way, and that is, it seems to me,
one of the most important boils to lance here. I'm not quite
sure how to do it, but I know the ISHLT thing is very helpful
on that. But obviously, maybe just even some explicit language
from the U.S. Government on this would help a lot.
Representative Nunn. Dr. Oliverson, did you have a follow-
up on that?
Dr. Oliverson. Yes, Commissioner. You know, we're in the
Natural Resources hearing room, as I understand it, and I think
the simplest answer to your question, which is the approach we
took in Texas, is you're not going to stop the supply. I think
it's important to understand that in its clearest form, a
communist government--whether it's China or another
government--looks at a human being not as an individual with
inalienable rights but as a natural resource. If that can be
monetized for the benefit of the collective good, you're never
going to stop that unless you can choke off the demand. That's
the approach that we took in Texas and that's what I'm here
today urging you to do--aggressively stop the flow of dollars
from Americans to China and other countries paying for these
procedures. If nobody wants the organs, then they'll stop
taking them.
Representative Nunn. I think that is probably one of the
most salient recommendations that we can have is that holding
folks accountable outside of China, as well as identifying the
threat coming from inside China, is a two-tier approach that we
need to take comprehensively.
Mr. Chairman, what I'd like to do going forward as well is
to come up with a list of recommendations that could be
actioned by committees of jurisdiction to be able to address
this, both holding China accountable on the international
scene--particularly those doing business with those thousand-
plus medical institutions operating in China--but then equally,
holding ourselves and our allies accountable for the export
market that has proven so lucrative for the destruction of
human life inside China. With that, I yield back the remainder
of my time. And I thank the Commission.
Chair Smith. Commissioner Nunn, thank you. As always, thank
you for your very well-informed and incisive questioning, but
also your recommendations. We will work with you on all of
that. Thank you so very much.
Mr. Gutmann, the first time I heard you talk about the
ideal age for harvesting being 28 years of age, we know that
when somebody gives their heart in a voluntary fashion, or one
of their loved ones does it, it's the result of a car accident
that has been catastrophic or something. It is not, you know, a
government official saying, Let's look at the 28-year-olds and
cull those out of the herd in order to destroy them to steal
their organs. About 25 years ago I read a book about Unit 731,
that Imperial Japan had operated inside of China, where
vivisection was performed on POWs, many, many Chinese, without
anesthesia--Dr. Oliverson, as you know.
They also did some organ harvesting there, not for
transplant, as far as we can tell, but for other reasons. They
tested all kinds of things like anthrax and other things on
them. Horrible, horrible stuff. And the Chinese, rightfully,
are outraged by what had been done at Unit 731. Well, this is
their Unit 731 in China today, taking these wonderful young men
and women. I think, Ethan, you had said previously that it's
pretty much equally divided between males and females. So we've
got a lot of young women and a lot of young men in the prime of
their lives being taken by a dictatorship to steal their
organs.
And one of the things--and maybe you might want to speak to
this--that we've been hearing about more and more is that there
are also dedicated wings or hospitals where, from Xi Jinping on
down, in the Chinese Communist Party, if they need a liver or
they need some other organ, you know, a very young and vibrant
and healthy 28-year-old will be involuntarily providing that to
them. So it's their way toward longevity at the cost of
committing murder in order to get there. Plus, there's also the
financial incentive as well, that they make money on this. If
any of you wanted to respond to that. But when I read that
book, and when I first heard through Harry Wu about organ
harvesting, the first thing I thought of was Unit 731, having
read that book as a newer Member of Congress way back when.
The designated hospitals, would any of you want to speak to
that? Or, you know, I thought you made a very good point,
Ethan, about the hospital in Aksu. That was very enlightening.
And if you wanted to elaborate on that at all . . . and then
your final comment that Congress can stop Beijing's ongoing
attempts to normalize medical deviance. And that the passage of
the Stop Organ Harvesting Act could galvanize the international
transplant community to stop seeing research and investigation
into the Chinese harvesting as inflammatory, but rather as a
quest for justice on behalf of those young men and women whose
only crime was that they were healthy. What a profound ending
to your testimony.
Mr. Gutmann. Thank you. I have nothing to add.
Chair Smith. Anybody else like to add before we close the
hearing? Thank you so much. You've given us so much to act
upon, so many insights, as you do on a regular basis but now in
an open hearing. I deeply appreciate it. The hearing is
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:46 a.m., the hearing was concluded.]
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A P P E N D I X
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Prepared Statements
------
Prepared Statement of Ethan Gutmann
I'll focus on recent developments today, specifically the CCP's
systematic harvesting of Uyghurs and other Turkic groups. Just as the
rise of China's transplant system was built on the persecution of Falun
Gong, harvesting is now bound to the ``Xinjiang Camp System''
constructed from 2016 to 2018.
I'll go through estimates of annual camp disappearances, taking
into account the strengths and weaknesses of camp refugee testimony,
move to a case study in Aksu, and conclude by describing a shift in
Western transplant surgeons' attitudes over the last 2 years--and the
implications for U.S. policy.
Let's begin with the Kazakh doctor, Sayragul Suaytbay. ``Employed''
as a Chinese language teacher, Sayragul made herself useful throughout
her camp. Following a camp-wide ``health check'' including
comprehensive blood tests, Sayragul was asked to sort out the camp's
medical files. She noticed a colored check mark on certain files in the
23- to 35-year-old age range based on tissue typing. From Sayragul's
perspective, she only lacked the external list of individuals who would
receive the organs.
Several camp survivors noticed that following the blood test
results, some prisoners were forced to wear colored bracelets or vests.
There was no apparent logic to the color grouping, only that they were
in their late twenties and ``they were healthy.''
Witness testimony is far from perfect. Personal bias, trauma, and
partisanship can influence the results. Yet I don't believe those
elements are distorting the testimony here.
First, every refugee was from a different camp.
Second, outside of the rape room, all 20 camps had installed
cameras and listening devices, talking was not allowed. Other than
saying something like ``pass the plunger,'' speech did not exist. In an
environment of suppressed social contact and omnipresent and arbitrary
interrogation or sexual abuse, humans compensate. Like starving
animals, hearing becomes acute. Vision sharpens. Minute changes are
keenly observed.
Third, most camp refugees whom I interviewed in Central Asia were
Kazakhs. With a relatively porous border and a nation-state that
occasionally lobbies China on their behalf, the Kazakhs view themselves
as ``accidental prisoners.'' They don't like their Chinese overlords,
but most Kazakhs are not loyal to the Uyghur cause. They had no motive
to manipulate numbers to reach a particular result or to please me.
Fourth, the interviews were purposely broad. Most witnesses had no
idea I was forming numerical estimates, and the majority were only
dimly aware of organ harvesting.
I wish to avoid false precision here. Even my most analytical
witness--Ovalbek Turdakun, who escaped from Kyrgyzstan--could never
determine the exact number of detainees in his camp.
What emerged is that there are two kinds of people who leave the
camp early: The first group is about 18 years old on average. The
announcement that they are going to work at a factory, or perhaps in a
bingtuan--a military-run cotton farm--is usually made during lunch.
Light applause is encouraged.
The second group is aged between 25 to 35. The average is usually
28--the age that the Chinese medical establishment prefers for organ
sourcing. They are removed in the middle of the night--no applause, not
to be mentioned again. There were a couple of outlier witnesses, but 90
percent of the witnesses were fairly consistent: 2.5 percent to 5
percent of the camp go missing exactly this way every year.
I don't have a plausible alternate explanation. Assuming there are
one million in the camps, I estimate 25,000 to 50,000 Uyghurs are
harvested annually.
Let's go with the lower range. The Kilgour-Matas-Gutmann report of
2016 estimated China's annual transplant volume at 60,000 to 100,000.
Using the minimum estimate, let's assume that Uyghurs and Kazakhs can
be harvested for at least two organs. That translates into a minimum of
50,000 organ transplants--the lion's share of China's annual transplant
volume--supplied by 25,000 people.
On the assumption that Gulf states' organ tourists prefer Muslim
``donors'' who don't eat pork, the CCP has tried to capitalize on the
switch from Falun Gong to Uyghur sources. At least one Chinese
transplant hospital blatantly displays its Muslim prayer room and halal
canteen on the web. Yet the logistical challenge of shifting from the
coastal area to Xinjiang--4,000 kilometers away from the hospitals
which organ tourists prefer--required perfusion methods and Western
technology. It also required a streamlined infrastructure. One example:
Picture a ``re-education camp'' for 16,000 people.
A hospital--``Aksu Infection''--that performs organ
transplants.
A second camp for 33,000 people, constructed around the
hospital.
And a large crematorium.
In Aksu, all these structures are less than a kilometer away from
one another. RFA reporter Gulchehra Hoja first noticed this anomaly,
and witnesses can confirm it. A Uyghur convict explained that the Aksu
Infection Hospital was originally for SARS patients. In 2013, it was
repurposed as a re-education hospital for ``extreme Muslim''
dissidents. The crematorium has a prominent Chinese sign, and ``the air
smells like burnt bones.'' A second Uyghur male confirmed that local
workers constantly complained about the stench.
It's a twenty-minute drive to Aksu Airport's ``Human Organ
Transport Channel''--an export-only fast lane to move human organs
east. ``First Hospital Zhejiang Province'' as a designated ``big
brother'' to Aksu Infection Hospital reports its liver transplants
increasing by 90 percent in 2017, while kidney transplants increased by
200 percent. On March 1, 2020, First Hospital performed the world's
first double lung transplant on a Covid patient--an advertisement to
foreign organ tourists that China was still open for business.
I'll conclude with policy. Beginning in 2012, the Western
transplant consensus was not to investigate China, but to engage with
and lead the Chinese transplant industry to a ``soft reform.'' This
consensus, however ineffective, acted as a brake on unified
congressional action.
In 2022, the International Society of Heart and Lung
Transplantation (ISHLT) decided to impose an academic boycott of China.
The next year, the ISHLT asked me to present my research--and the
research of Robertson, Lavee, Matas and Kilgour--at their annual
conference. No transplant group has followed the ISHLT's lead at this
time. Congress has a responsibility to act on an ongoing human rights
catastrophe but must also respond to the ISHLT's courageous act.
Realistically, the infrastructure of harvesting may be too robust
to save Uyghur and Kazakh lives in the near term. Yet Congress can stop
Beijing's ongoing attempts to normalize medical deviance, and the
passage of the Stop Organ Harvesting Act could galvanize the
international transplant community to stop seeing research and
investigation into Chinese harvesting as inflammatory, but rather, as a
quest for justice on behalf of those young men and women whose only
crime was ``they were healthy.''
That concludes my remarks.
Organ Trafficking in China: Background and Current Concerns
by Matthew Robertson
Table of Contents
1. Background.................................................... 34
1.1 Methods.................................................... 35
2. Six key factual claims........................................ 35
2.1 GThe PRC state has sponsored a marketplace in human organs
for many years................................................. 35
2.2 GPrisoners have been blood tested, held captive, and then
killed on demand for their organs.............................. 35
2.3 GState agents have engaged in human trafficking and
extrajudicial killing to secure organs......................... 36
2.4 GChina's organ transplantation system appears to have begun
as a means of health care for the elite........................ 37
2.5 GSurgeons and health care workers have personally engaged
in killing by heart removal.................................... 37
2.6 GThe PRC state has falsified its organ transplant data..... 38
3. Current concerns.............................................. 39
3.1 GLack of accountability means there are no incentives for
the cessation of the abuse..................................... 39
3.2 GUyghurs are highly vulnerable to this abuse............... 39
4. Recommendations............................................... 40
4.1 GInvestigate federal funding............................... 40
4.2 GIncreased congressional oversight......................... 40
4.3 GIndividual sanctions...................................... 40
4.4 GDiplomatic pressure....................................... 41
4.5 GEntity sanctions.......................................... 41
1. Background
In the world of organ transplantation, the People's Republic of
China (PRC) is an outlier. With few exceptions, organs always come from
voluntary donors. Yet until 2015 the PRC's organ transplantation sector
was effectively a state-sponsored system of human trafficking and
killing on demand, with organs sourced almost entirely from death row
prisoners and, after 1999, political prisoners. After 2015, it became
more difficult to assess--though as I explain below there are still
major concerns.
This organ procurement method seemingly originated as a means of
providing healthcare for the elite. Surgeons and healthcare workers
appear to have personally participated in medicalized executions to
extract vital organs such as hearts and lungs.
Since the inception of organ transplantation in China, the practice
has been closely tied to the state judicial and security systems, which
supplied nonconsenting organ donors to transplant hospitals. That is,
organ procurement in China has gone hand-in-hand with abuses against
criminal prisoners and political enemies. The earliest reported
instance of such abuse occurred in 1970, with the reported live organ
harvesting of an 18-year-old former Red Guard commander sentenced to
death for political heresy. The most well-known early case took place
in 1978, when a young political prisoner reportedly had her kidneys
extracted on the execution ground while she was still alive.
With China's economic reforms, the organ transplantation system
also became subject to market forces. Beginning in 2000, China's organ
transplantation sector exploded in activity. Thousands of transplant
surgeons were trained, and hundreds of hospitals began offering
transplants as a routine therapy. The military-medical complex became
heavily involved in transplant activity and research. Transplant
waiting times went from many months to just weeks, days, and sometimes
hours. Organ transplantation went from a specialized therapy catering
primarily to Party cadres to a routine treatment available country-
wide. Hospitals began posting organ availability and price lists on
websites, and transplant tourists from around the world flew to China
to receive organs on designated dates (meaning the timing of the
execution of the donor must have been planned in advance.)
Chinese-language sources reveal that the two key shifts in China's
transplant sector beginning in 2000 were volume and waiting times: tens
of thousands of transplants were performed annually, many on an on-
demand basis, coinciding with a gradual and then sudden drop in
judicial executions. The use of political prisoners as an organ source,
particularly Falun Gong adherents incarcerated en masse from July 1999,
is the only plausible explanation for this outcome.
In 2015, facing international scrutiny, China's medical
administrators announced a transition from using prisoners to voluntary
donors. Chinese officials reported extraordinary success in these
reforms, but China's standards for public transplant data provision
differ significantly from international norms, with official registries
remaining inaccessible.
Regrettably, the PRC seems to have fabricated its voluntary organ
donation data. Analysis of the available data casts grave doubts on the
veracity of China's assertions, with official statistics exhibiting an
implausibly smooth growth rate, discrepancies across datasets, and the
misclassification of nonconsenting donors as voluntary. Although some
genuine voluntary reform is taking place, the systematic manipulation
of data obscures its actual scope. This data falsification can be
understood as a strategic act by the state to project an image of
reform while maintaining opacity and control over the organ
transplantation system.
Much of the above relates to events in the past. There are at least
two grounds for ongoing concern.
First, there has been almost no accountability for this multi-
decade program of large-scale human trafficking and extrajudicial
killing. PRC surgeons involved in this campaign still travel freely to
international medical conferences. They are enabled by many people in
the international medical community who ignore the topic.
Second, just as during the repression of Falun Gong in 1999, the
large-scale internment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang has been accompanied by
large-scale blood testing. Approximately one third of the individuals
identified in the Xinjiang Police Files, a cache of internal documents
hacked from public security computer systems in two counties of
Xinjiang, have had their blood samples taken. That is, in many of the
files the ID and name of an internee is listed alongside the blood
type. There are several thousand cases of explicitly labeled DNA
collection from internees, and thousands of files through the corpus
discuss DNA collection from Uyghurs.
While this alone does not prove Uyghurs are being harvested for
organs, blood type is a necessary precondition for organ matching, and
DNA data can improve matches. Given China's history of killing
prisoners for organs, the mass collection of such data from
extrajudicially detained Uyghurs is disturbing.
1.1 Methods
I am a social scientist with expertise in computational and
quantitative methods, professional fluency in Chinese, and a strong
interest in the scientific study of political violence and genocide. I
have studied China's organ transplantation system for many years. My
primary method of work is to write code to scrape data from a wide
variety of sources, then to construct large-scale datasets and
searchable databases from these documents. I analyze the data using
both statistical models and close, qualitative reading. I situate my
work in the public choice tradition--where I am interested in
understanding the private incentives of state actors.
Below, I have tried to summarize the most important parts of my
findings in six factual arguments.
2. Six key factual claims
2.1 The PRC state has sponsored a marketplace in human organs for many
years
This assertion is supported by admissions from Chinese medical
authorities, media reports, and the listing of organ transplant prices
on hospital websites. Chinese medical officials have acknowledged that
executed prisoners were the primary source of organs, a fact reported
in both domestic and international media, as well as in official
statements and medical papers.
Dr. Huang Jiefu, formerly China's vice minister of health and for
decades the leader of the transplant sector, has admitted in interviews
with Beijing-friendly Chinese media that China's organ transplantation
system was characterized by complex entanglements and vested interests,
leading to a ``filthy'' and murky trade. In an interview, he stated:
``There are definitely all kinds of intricate entanglements, interests,
and chains of interests involved, which makes it filthy. It becomes
filthy, becomes unclear and inexplicable, and turns into a particularly
sensitive and complex area, a forbidden zone.'' \1\
Hospital websites have openly listed prices for various organ
transplant operations. For example, the China International Organ
Transplant Center website displayed prices ranging from tens of
thousands to over $100,000US for foreign patients, while domestic
prices were significantly lower, in the range of tens of thousands RMB.
The Zhongshan Hospital at Xiamen University provided an Excel file on
their website detailing prices for a wide range of transplant
therapies.\2\
In addition, the First Affiliated Hospital of Inner Mongolia
Medical University, a regional-level heart and lung transplant center,
published a list of service charges for various transplant surgeries.
These prices, ranging from 600 to 5,000 RMB, appeared to cover only the
transplant surgery and excluded organ and procurement costs.\3\ A large
portion of the payments for surgery in China also takes place in cash
transactions.
Similarly, the Fujian Provincial Hospital, a regional-level kidney
transplant center, listed prices on its website for an extensive number
of organ transplants, despite only being certified for kidney
transplants. The prices ranged from 3,000 RMB for keratoplasty to
33,000 RMB for heart-lung transplantation, with the organ cost not
included.\4\
These examples illustrate a state-sponsored marketplace for human
organs in China, with prices openly advertised on hospital websites and
substantial price disparities between foreign and domestic patients.\5\
The state's role in enabling and profiting from this market suggests a
strategic exploitation of prisoner populations for financial gain.
2.2 Prisoners have been blood tested, held captive, and then killed on
demand for their organs
Substantial evidence indicates that prisoners in China have been
subjected to blood tests, held in captivity, and killed on demand for
their organs. This assertion is corroborated by evidence and admissions
from high-level Chinese officials, medical professionals, and official
publications. Prisoners here are treated as a resource--a captive pool
of organ supply to be exploited as needed.
Dr. Huang, a prominent liver transplant surgeon, has been
intimately involved in the organ transplantation system in China. In
2005, he traveled to Xinjiang to perform a complex autologous liver
transplantation on a local Communist Party official. As a backup, Huang
ordered two extra livers from hospitals in Chongqing and Guangzhou,
which were delivered the next morning.\6\ This event demonstrates the
extraordinary ability to procure organs on demand, which is effectively
impossible to do reliably and at scale in systems relying on voluntary
donations. Given Huang's high-ranking position and expertise, his
actions suggest knowledge of the methods used to source organs from
prisoners.
Prior to the allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong
practitioners in 2006, Chinese hospitals openly advertised organ
transplants on short waiting times, ranging from weeks to months. They
also scheduled foreign tourists for heart transplants on specific
dates.\7\ The China Liver Transplant Registry in 2005 and 2006 revealed
that a significant portion of liver transplants were conducted on an
``emergency'' basis, defined as within 24 to 72 hours of a patient's
presentation at the hospital.\8\ The only plausible explanation for
this phenomenon is the existence of a pool of pre-blood-typed, healthy
donors who could be killed on demand for their organs.
Medical papers and anecdotes from Chinese surgeons further support
the claim of organ sourcing from prisoners on demand. In one instance,
doctors flew a donor to Tibet for a liver extraction, ensuring the
simultaneous removal of the recipient's liver to maintain the viability
of the transplanted organ.\9\ This constitutes an admission of human
trafficking for killing and organ removal, given that they expressly
flew a living forced donor to a different location, only to then
conduct the execution and organ procurement. Chinese media also
documented cases of rapid re-transplantation after rejection, with
hospitals guaranteeing re-transplantation within a week in case of
failure.\10\ Surgeons expressed enthusiasm for performing a high volume
of transplants, with one stating that his team was ``militarized'' and
ready to procure organs at any time.\11\
These pieces of evidence, along with the disconnect between the
volume of transplants and the number of executed prisoners, strongly
suggest that prisoners in China have been blood tested, held captive,
and killed on demand for their organs. The involvement of high-ranking
officials, the short waiting times, and the ability to procure organs
rapidly all point to a state-sanctioned system of organ harvesting from
prisoners, likely including prisoners of conscience.
2.3 State agents have engaged in human trafficking and extrajudicial
killing to secure organs
Evidence of human trafficking is apparent from the above
anecdotes--that is, if a prisoner is moved from one location to another
for the purposes of their being killed and having their organs
trafficked, this constitutes human trafficking for the purpose of organ
removal.\12\
To conclude that the PRC has also engaged in extrajudicial killing
in the process of organ trafficking requires different evidence, and
inference on that evidence.
The main reason to believe that the PRC has engaged in this
practice is that it is the only plausible explanation that accounts for
the observations.
First, there are numerous reports of prisoners, particularly Falun
Gong detainees, being subjected to unusual blood tests and physical
examinations focused on assessing organ health.\13\ These tests, which
include blood typing, are a necessary precursor to organ matching and
transplantation. Falun Gong refugees have reported that buses would
arrive at labor camps, and only Falun Gong practitioners would be
called out for examinations and blood tests. In the following months,
many of those tested would disappear.\14\
Second, investigators making calls to Chinese hospitals and posing
as potential transplant recipients have elicited admissions from
doctors and nurses that organs are available on demand, with some of
them stating explicitly that the organs come from Falun Gong
prisoners.\15\ The short waiting times promised, often just weeks or
even days, further suggest a large pool of pre-screened, living donors
who can be executed as needed.
Third, as noted above, a significant portion of transplants in
China were being performed on an emergency basis, with recipients
receiving a matching organ within 24 to 72 hours of presenting with
liver failure. In 2005 and 2006, 26-29 percent of reported liver
transplants fell into this ``emergency'' category.\16\ This suggests a
bank of living donors who can be killed on demand. This phenomenon only
began in the PRC following the anti-Falun Gong campaign.
Fourth, the official explanation that China's transplant boom was
driven by death-row prisoners is inadequate. Executions in China have
been in steady decline since 2000, with a particularly sharp drop after
2007 due to legal reforms requiring Supreme Court review of all death
sentences.\17\ However, transplant activity continued to grow during
this period, with hospitals expanding their transplant centers and bed
capacity.\18\
Finally, there is no evidence of a major shift in transplantation
technology or practices around 1999-2000 that could explain China's
sudden growth in transplant volume. While other countries saw steady
increases in transplants per capita from 1989 onward, China's numbers
jumped dramatically after 1999, suggesting a fundamental difference in
organ sourcing--not technology that allows greater yield from the same
population of donors.\19\ The surge in transplants also took place
immediately after the onset of the persecution of Falun Gong.
In summary, the transplant activity observed in China, particularly
in the post-2000 period, cannot be adequately explained by voluntary
donations or death-row prisoners. The most plausible explanation, based
on the available evidence, is that the Chinese state has been
systematically killing prisoners of conscience, primarily Falun Gong
practitioners, to obtain organs for transplantation. This would be
consistent with blood and physical tests indicating organ harvesting,
on-demand transplant availability, and a captive population that can be
executed without consequence. There is no other known source of organs
able to explain the outcome we observe.
While some have made an isolated demand for rigor about these
claims--that only incontrovertible proof is acceptable before speaking
about it or taking action--standards of evidence and burdens of proof
are inherently political. The social scientist can only argue about
which explanation is best able to account for the observations. This is
why I believe we should adopt this explanation as adequate until a
better one presents itself, or we come to uncover new, contradictory
facts about this period of organ transplantation system development in
the PRC.
This line of argumentation--inference to best explanation--is
particularly relevant when considering the large scale blood testing of
Uyghur detainees discussed below.
2.4 China's organ transplantation system appears to have begun as a
means of health care for the elite
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long provided confidential,
high-quality health-care exclusively for its top leaders. The CCP
established a secret healthcare system for state leaders as far back as
the 1940's, which included special hospitals, clinics, and physicians
dedicated to treating the elite.\20\ This system, known as the Central
Commission Healthcare Committee, operates under the direct control of
the CCP Central Committee's General Office. It coordinates with
hospitals run by the Ministry of Health and the military to provide
comprehensive medical care for the Party's upper echelons. The
Healthcare Committee uses this system as a tool of political control--
leaders in good standing receive a high level of treatment, while those
who have erred politically may be deprived of care.
This system has been tightly bound up with organ transplantation
expertise. Key personnel involved in both the early development of this
elite healthcare system, as well as its modern incarnation, have had
deep transplant expertise which they presumably used in the care of
Party leaders. These figures include Wu Jieping, a renowned urologist
and confidant to Zhou Enlai, and Li Yantang, another leading kidney
transplant surgeon.\21\ In 1964, when Mao Zedong shut down the
Healthcare Committee, Wu was appointed by Zhou to lead a small team
that continued to provide exclusive care for the Politburo Standing
Committee. Wu went on to become a trusted physician to many top
leaders. Li Yantang also cultivated close relationships with the Party
leadership through his role providing them healthcare. He served as the
personal physician to Deng Xiaoping and other revolutionary leaders for
over 20 years.\22\
This elite Party-controlled medical network appears to have served
as an incubator for China's organ transplantation system. The same top
hospitals and expert doctors that were charged with treating the
leadership also took the lead in developing and performing transplant
surgeries, including the China--Japan Friendship Hospital, the 301 and
305 military hospitals, and others.
There are many ongoing connections between leading transplant
physicians and the CCP's secret healthcare systems. As noted above,
Huang Jiefu was for many years a vice chair on the Healthcare
Committee.\23\ Similarly, the prolific liver surgeon Shen Zhongyang has
long been appointed a ``core expert'' for the Committee,\24\ while He
Xiaoshun, another major figure in the transplant field, has also served
on the committee.\25\
2.5 Surgeons and health care workers have personally engaged in
killing by heart removal
A recent study of which I was a co-author provides strong evidence
that transplant surgeons in the PRC have participated directly in the
execution of prisoners by organ procurement.\26\ Our work finds that
for decades, Chinese surgeons and other health workers played a key
role in a state-sponsored program of medicalized execution by procuring
vital organs from prisoners who were not properly declared brain dead.
This finding challenges fundamental ethical principles of transplant
medicine and implicates medical professionals in severe human rights
abuses.
To reach this conclusion, we examined 2,838 Chinese-language
transplant publications using computational text analysis. We searched
for evidence of problematic brain death declarations during organ
procurement, which would violate the dead donor rule--the ethical norm
forbidding the procurement of vital organs from living donors. Our
algorithm identified papers with language similar to text strings
associated with dead donor rule violations.
We defined as problematic any declaration of brain death where the
report stated that the donor was intubated after the declaration of
brain death, or the donor was intubated immediately before organ
procurement as part of the procurement operation, or the donor was
ventilated by face mask only. In such cases, brain death could not have
been properly diagnosed before organ procurement began, which makes the
surgical removal of organs the proximate cause of death.
We identified 71 papers published between 1980 and 2015 containing
such problematic descriptions. These papers came from 56 hospitals
nationwide, with 348 medical personnel listed as authors, indicating a
widespread and systematic practice. We discarded many other papers
documenting transplant operations because they did not meet our
stringent criteria.
Our findings challenge Chinese officials' claims that transplant
surgeons are never involved in executions. The study documents what
appears to be a state-sponsored program of medicalized execution in
which surgeons and other health workers played a crucial role.
Subsequently, the International Society for Heart and Lung
Transplantation initiated a policy to reject submissions related to
human organ transplantation from the PRC.\27\ It is the only
professional medical society to have enacted such a policy.
2.6 The PRC state has falsified its organ transplant data
In response to international pressure based on the facts above,
Chinese officials announced a series of reforms starting in 2010 with
the stated goal of transitioning to a voluntary organ donation system.
They reported extraordinary successes, with annual voluntary deceased
donors increasing from 34 in 2010 to over 6,300 by 2018. This data,
along with assurances that China was no longer using prisoner organs,
led international medical organizations to endorse China's organ
donation reform.
However, a careful analysis of the available data on China's organ
transplant system casts serious doubt on the integrity of China's
reported numbers. In another paper I co-authored with Dr. Jacob Lavee,
we found that the official figures on voluntary deceased donors
conformed almost perfectly to a mathematical formula, specifically a
quadratic equation.\28\ China's data adhered extremely closely to this
arbitrary formula, different from every other country about which data
was available. That is, only China's data exhibited this artificial
smoothness. Subsequently, updated 2017 data--which came out after our
initial analysis--strengthened the hypothesis that the data was
manufactured, because it provided even stronger evidence that the data
had been generated based on a model. Such precise conformity to a
mathematical model is extremely unlikely to occur organically from a
complex, geographically dispersed voluntary donation system.
Further investigation revealed anomalies suggestive of data
falsification in two other datasets--central-level Red Cross figures
and provincial Red Cross data. The central-level Red Cross data
contained multiple instances of implausible transplant rates that were
``corrected'' in subsequent data points to maintain an arbitrary
organs-per-donor ratio. Provincial Red Cross data was found to be
inconsistent with transplant activity reported by hospitals. Attempts
to verify official transplant numbers were stymied by a lack of
transparency, with key data either withheld or tightly controlled by
authorities.
We conclude in the paper that the patterns identified cannot
plausibly be explained by real underlying organ donation activity, and
that the main datasets must have been manufactured and manipulated,
apparently to create a false impression of the successes of China's
voluntary donation reform.
While genuine voluntary donations do appear to be occurring, the
corruption of official datasets makes it impossible to determine the
actual scale of China's transplant activity and the extent to which
organs from nonconsenting prisoners may still be entering the system.
The deliberate falsification of such important data is a serious breach
of trust that undermines the credibility of China's claims of reform
and ethical organ sourcing.
3. Current concerns
3.1 Lack of accountability means there are no incentives for the
cessation of the abuse
The grave human rights abuses and extrajudicial killings associated
with China's organ transplantation system, as detailed in the preceding
sections, have been met with little to no domestic accountability
within China. The Chinese judicial system has not taken action against
the state agents involved in these abuses, which is unsurprising given
that they were acting in their official capacities in furtherance of
Party interests. This lack of internal consequences removes a crucial
incentive for change and reform.
On the international stage, the repercussions for China's
transplant community have also been limited. Despite the evidence of
their involvement in unethical and abusive practices, top Chinese
transplant surgeons continue to publish in prestigious medical journals
(with the notable exception of the International Society for Heart and
Lung Transplantation's journals) and participate in conferences
alongside leading Western colleagues. This stands in stark contrast to
the international isolation and professional ostracization faced by
Soviet psychiatrists for their complicity in human rights abuses, or
even the pressure exerted by the World Psychiatric Association on
Chinese psychiatrists that led to a temporary cessation of psychiatric
abuse in China. The threat of damaged reputations and stunted careers
can be a powerful motivator for medical professionals to reject
unethical practices, but this pressure has not been sufficiently
brought to bear on China's transplant sector.
The absence of meaningful accountability, both domestically and
internationally, sends a signal that reform is optional rather than
imperative. Without tangible consequences, there is little incentive
for China to fundamentally alter its organ sourcing practices, as
evidenced by ongoing reports of suspiciously short waiting times for
organ transplants in Chinese hospitals. Investigators and documentary
filmmakers have continued to uncover evidence suggestive of ongoing
abuses in recent years.
Given the severity and scale of the abuses that have been credibly
alleged and documented, the burden of proof should lie with China to
demonstrably prove that its organ transplantation system is now ethical
and abuse-free. The only credible mechanism for China to demonstrate
this would be large-scale accountability for the system of
extrajudicial killing. In the absence of such accountability efforts
there are fewer incentives for ceasing the abuses, and it is difficult
to justify the belief that they have stopped.
3.2 Uyghurs are highly vulnerable to this abuse
The mass internment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in
Xinjiang since 2017 has been accompanied by a range of disturbing
practices that raise concerns about their vulnerability to organ
harvesting. These include the widespread, coercive collection of DNA
and blood types, blood tests and physical examinations consistent with
assessing organ health, deaths in custody and disappearances, the
secretive transfer of detainees by rail to prisons across China, and
the continuation of organ trafficking in China post-2017.
Particularly alarming is the evidence of large-scale blood testing
and biometric data collection from Uyghurs in detention. A preliminary
computational review of the Xinjiang Police Files, a cache of internal
documents hacked from public security computer systems in two counties
of Xinjiang, reveals that over 200,000 individuals from a pool of over
500,000 have had their blood samples taken. In many cases, the ID and
name of an internee is listed alongside their blood type. The files
also contain several thousand instances of explicitly labeled DNA
collection from internees, with thousands of files throughout the
corpus discussing DNA collection from Uyghurs.
While the collection of blood type and DNA data does not in itself
prove that Uyghurs are being harvested for their organs, it is a
necessary precondition for organ matching. Blood type compatibility is
essential for successful transplantation, and DNA data can be used to
improve donor-recipient matches and post-transplant outcomes.\1\ In the
context of China's history of killing prisoners for their organs and
the ongoing reports of organ trafficking, the mass collection of this
sensitive biological information from a population subjected to
extralegal detention is deeply concerning.
The parallels between the current repression of Uyghurs and the
earlier persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, which coincided with a
surge in organ transplants and evidence of forced organ harvesting, are
striking. Uyghur detainees have reported being subjected to unexplained
blood tests and medical examinations focused on assessing organ health,
mirroring the accounts of Falun Gong detainees in the early 2000s.\2\
The transfer of Uyghur prisoners by rail to facilities across China,\3\
the lack of accountability for deaths in custody, and the continuation
of organ trafficking in Chinese hospitals \4\ despite claims of reform
all contribute to an environment in which Uyghurs are highly vulnerable
to being exploited as an organ source.
Given the gravity of the allegations and the mounting evidence of
abusive practices targeting Uyghurs, it is imperative that the
international community demand transparency and independent
investigations into China's organ transplant system. The mass
collection of blood samples and biometric data from Uyghur detainees,
in light of China's history of organ harvesting from prisoners, should
be treated as a matter of urgent concern and a potential precursor to
severe human rights violations.
4. Recommendations
My expertise is in the substantial and methodological questions
associated with researching this and other social scientific
questions--not in what lawmakers and policymakers ought to do in
response.
Organizations like the International Coalition to End Transplant
Abuse in China, Global Rights Compliance, medical groups like Doctors
Against Forced Organ Harvesting, and professional associations like the
International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation have proposed
a variety of policies that would isolate Chinese surgeons engaged in
unethical transplant activity, rejecting their publications or denying
their participation in conferences.
With sufficient political will, additional measures could be
implemented. A high-level menu of action items for the U.S. and other
governments (in rough escalatory order) might include:
4.1 Investigate federal funding
The U.S. Government should investigate whether federal funding has
been provided to Chinese entities involved in unethical organ
transplantation practices. Through my research, I have compiled several
large datasets from primary Chinese-language sources, including over
100,000 medical publications, biographies of surgeons, and transplant
textbooks. These can be used to identify thousands of surgeons,
healthcare workers, and hundreds of affiliated hospital institutions
engaged in these activities. The practices described, such as organ
trafficking and human trafficking for the purpose of organ removal, are
not only criminal but also violate human subject research protections
outlined in the Common Rule and the NIH's policy on human subjects
protections.\1\
Some of the hospitals involved are among the largest in China and
have many international ties. Have they received Federal funding from
U.S. agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health and the
National Science Foundation? Congress should write letters to these
organizations, requesting a review of past and current funding to
entities that have violated human subject protections and engaged in
organ trafficking. Grantee institutions should be asked to account for
their level of oversight of potential subawardees implicated in these
practices.
4.2 Increased congressional oversight
Another area that requires further scrutiny is the role of U.S.
medical schools in training Chinese surgeons who have subsequently
engaged in unethical transplant practices. My preliminary analysis of a
cache of surgeon biographies indicates that hundreds of PRC doctors
received training at U.S. institutions--but the full scope of this
training remains unclear.
Congressional oversight could include getting a much more thorough
understanding of which U.S. hospitals have trained Chinese surgeons,
specifically which surgeons they have trained, what they have trained
them in, and when. This data could then be joined with our data on
doctors and hospitals that have engaged in organ trafficking, in order
to understand the extent to which U.S. institutions, particularly those
in receipt of Federal funding, have been complicit in the training of
PRC surgeons.
This sort of investigation is relevant even if the training took
place many years ago. Without congressional oversight, it would be
difficult to get the records held by these U.S. entities showing the
full scope of their interaction with and training of PRC surgeons. We
have a number of leads on the U.S. hospitals in question and we would
be pleased to share them directly with Congress.
4.3 Individual sanctions
The United States could freeze any U.S. assets and deny visas of
all surgeons and health care workers who have participated in organ
transplant surgeries prior to 2015. I suggest the cutoff as 2015
because even though data associated with the transplant reforms was
falsified, there is evidently some level of reform taking place. A 2015
cutoff gives Chinese health care workers the benefit of the doubt.
Prior to 2015, however, there was no national voluntary organ
procurement system, and thus almost all transplants were illicit and
involved coercion, trafficking, and often extrajudicial killing.
It is possible that the U.S. could enroll allied governments in
putting similar pressure on perpetrators. This may make it impossible
for surgeons to travel to Western-aligned countries. The deterrent and
shaming effect of measures like this might help to spur further reform
and help to reduce any ongoing abuses.
4.4 Diplomatic pressure
The United States could present specific information of criminal or
unethical transplant activities about named facilities and doctors to
the Chinese government and pressure the government to investigate and
prosecute them. As we know, the individuals in question work for the
state and engaged in human trafficking and extrajudicial killing in
their capacity as agents of the state--nevertheless, publicly and
privately drawing attention to this information and demanding that
action be taken could have some effect.
4.5 Entity sanctions
This would be the most forceful set of sanctions.
Some of the hospitals and medical centers that engaged in these
illegal activities, and apparently still engage in them, are among the
largest and most well-resourced in China. It may be feasible to craft
export bans that prevented any transplant-related technology or
pharmaceuticals from entering China, and/or preventing any U.S.-
connected businesses from transacting in China's transplant sector.
It may also be possible for the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets
Control to add these hospitals to the Specially Designated Nationals
and Blocked Persons list, which would prevent financial transactions
with U.S. persons. Gathering the intelligence and conducting the legal
analysis needed to responsibly make these designations would be a major
interagency effort, but adding thousands of hospitals and surgeons to
OFAC's SDN list would send an extremely strong signal about the U.S.'s
opposition to the PRC's practices of human trafficking, extrajudicial
killing, and organ harvesting.
[Endnotes appear on the following two pages.]
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Matthew P. Robertson, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, 900
15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20005; Australian National University,
Research School of Social Sciences, Canberra ACT 2600
Prepared Statement of Maya (Maisam) Mitalipova, Ph.D.
Forced Organ Harvesting and Corporate Complicity in China
The Chinese government is building the world's largest DNA database
by acquiring DNA sequencing data from companies within China and across
the globe, including the USA.
Numerous biotechnology companies are assisting the Chinese police
in building this database and may find themselves complicit in these
violations. They include multinational companies such as U.S.-based
Thermo Fisher Scientific and major Chinese companies like BGI (Beijing
Genomics Institute), AGCU Scientific, and Microread Genetics. BGI in
particular is dangerous because it collects genetic data of Americans
and uses it for research with the Chinese military.
Chinese authorities are enrolling in genome surveillance tens of
millions of people in Tibet and Xinjiang (a.k.a. East Turkistan), who
have no history of serious criminal activity. These individuals have no
control over how their samples were collected, stored, and used.
Neither do they know of the potential implications of DNA collection
for them and for their extended families.
The indiscriminate collection of biometric data in China was first
reported by Human Rights Watch. Beginning in 2013, state authorities
obtained biometric samples from nearly the entire population of Tibet
(3 million residents) and in 2016, a similar program was launched in
Xinjiang, where data from the region's estimated 15 million Uyghurs and
other Turkic people, was collected under the guise of free annual
physical exams. Note, the Han Chinese population of the region was
exempt from this program. Despite these being ``free exams,'' no
results were returned to these residents.
Mass DNA sequencing is a costly project. The least expensive
sequencing of a small portion of DNA today costs $100 per sample. To
sequence 15 million samples in Xinjiang can cost at least $1-2 billion.
To maintain these databases for tens of millions of samples you need a
substantial number of professional bioinformatic specialists,
specialized computers and software, and expensive sequencing machines.
Why is the Chinese government investing billions of dollars to
sequence the DNA of the entire population of Xinjiang and Tibet?
What can DNA sequenced data be used for?
DNA sequencing can be used in basic biological research, disease
discovery, finding of novel treatments, forensics, ancestry research
and in organ transplantation.
Now let's see which of these uses can be applied to Uyghur people
in Xinjiang:
Finding disease mutations and ancestry research? In the
region where the Chinese government is conducting genocide against the
Uyghur people by detaining up to 3 million (according to the State
Department) of them in prisons and camps? The answer is ``NO.''
For forensic investigation? On the rest of the population
of Uyghurs who are not yet detained? On people who are tightly
monitored by extensive surveillance cameras? On people whose passports
have been confiscated by authorities since 2016? On people whose
kitchen knives are chained in their homes? They live in an open-air
prison. They have no way to commit a criminal act even if they wanted
to. On the margins, forensic investigation might add to the cost of DNA
sequencing by tightening surveillance capacity. But the answer is
``NO.''
The only reason left for DNA use is organ transplantation. And
``YES,'' its use for forced organ harvesting and transplantation can
absolutely justify the enormous cost of mass DNA sequencing.
According to a witnesses, authorities in Xinjiang, on a mandatory
basis, withdraw not only blood for DNA, but also perform an ultrasound
check of all internal organs, including iris scans. Again, patients
never receive results from these health checks.
China's organ transplantation industry accounts for, at a minimum,
60,000 organ transplants per year. The least expensive kidney
transplant costs around $70,000 and some other organs can cost up to
half a million dollars.
In free countries like the USA and Europe, organ donor recipients
are on a waitlist for years for matching donor organs, while in China
the matching donors can be found in a few weeks. The Chinese government
favors forced-organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience and this
has been practiced for decades involving a very large number of Falun
Gong practitioners and now Uyghurs. According to research conducted by
Ethan Gutmann, an estimated minimum of 25,000 Uyghurs are subjected to
forced organ harvesting per year.
For successful organ transplantation, doctors rely on several
important criteria including three main blood tests, cell surface tests
and limited DNA tests to determine if a patient and a potential donor
are a match. Current genetic tests detect differences in DNA sequences
at just a few specific locations in the genomes of transplant
recipients and their organ donor. The fewer differences, the better the
chance of long-term acceptance of the new organ. Whole genome
sequencing data for a large number of genes would give a better match
of donor and recipient organs, which in return will result in no
rejection and the long-term survival of transplanted organs.
When a patient requests an organ in China, his/her DNA sequenced
data will be blasted against millions in the DNA database stored in
computers. Within a few minutes, a perfect match will be found. If a
potential donor of the organs is not in prison or a camp, then Chinese
authorities can easily find a reason to detain a match to be killed for
their organs on demand.
This is the main reason why the Chinese government invested
billions of dollars into DNA sequencing of the entire population of
Xinjiang and Tibet. Because it will make exponentially many more
billions of dollars per year in return.
Thermo Fisher's involvement in forced organ harvesting in Xinjiang
is undeniable. But while it has vowed to stop selling sequencing
machines to the region and to stop providing technical support to
maintain them, the company is very successfully selling HLA kits and
other custom-made DNA profiling products for organ transplantation as
high as in the ten-million-dollar range. Thermo Fisher's Huaxia PCR
amplification kit was developed specifically to identify the genotypes
of Uyghur, Tibetan and Hui ethnic minorities.
The continued sale of DNA profiling products and technologies by
Thermo Fisher to China has to be stopped by Congress! It is time for
the U.S. Congress to pass the bill introduced by Senators Hagerty and
Peters, the ``Prohibiting Foreign Access to American Genetic
Information Act of 2024'' (S. 355). This legislation will help to
protect sensitive genome data of Americans from being used by foreign
governments like China, whose business practices threaten U.S. national
security.
There is also growing evidence that academic research universities
and publishers across the globe and in the U.S. are complicit in aiding
the use of genetic technologies to surveil minority groups like Uyghurs
and Tibetans in China. Professor Moreau and his colleagues warned
scientific publisher PLOS, based in San Francisco, of 96 of its
published research papers--that these papers hold sensitive genome data
from minority ethnic groups. Only 12 of these 96 flagged papers have
been retracted so far. Ethical concerns go beyond scientific
publications. Data collected from these publications is commonly
deposited into genetic databases, which are resources not only for
medical researchers and population geneticists but also, in some cases,
law-enforcement agencies.
I ask Congress to take action to restrict U.S. academic research
universities and scientific publishers from sharing any technologies
with Chinese companies like BGI or the like.
I urge Congress to question and if necessary, to sanction Thermo
Fisher for aiding China in the genocide of the innocent Uyghur and
Tibetan people and prisoners of conscience throughout the Chinese
mainland!
References
1. https://www.hagerty.senate.gov/press-releases/2024/03/06/hagerty-
peters-applaud-committee-approval-of-bipartisan-legislation-to-protect-
american-genetic-data-from-china-controlled-companies/
2. https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4421537-us-company-must-
stop-
supplying-chinas-regime-with-dna-surveillance-tech/
3. https://www.science.org/content/article/ethics-not-checkbox-
exercise-bioinformatician-yves-moreau-reacts-mass-retraction-papers
4. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00170-0
Prepared Statement of Tom Oliverson, M.D.
Good afternoon, Chair Smith and Chair Merkley, and members of the
Commission. My name is Tom Oliverson, and I serve as a state
representative in Texas, where I chair the Insurance Committee. Thank
you for allowing me the opportunity to be here today to speak about the
horrific practice of forced organ harvesting.
I first became aware of forced organ harvesting through the
advocacy work of the Southern USA Falun Dafa Association. There is a
sizable number of Falun Gong practitioners in the Houston area where I
live and represent, many of whom are political and religious refugees
of China. Later, I was introduced to the Minaret Foundation and learned
about their advocacy work on behalf of the Chinese Uyghur population.
I have worked with both of these groups for several years to honor
the victims of communism and recognize the horrors of forced organ
harvesting, but our most significant victory came during the most
recent Texas legislative session, when we passed SB 1040.
Senate Bill 1040 is an attempt to prevent Texans from becoming
unknowingly complicit in the act of forced organ harvesting. Senate
Bill 1040 prohibits health benefit plan issuers from covering human
organ transplants that are performed in China or in another country
known to participate in forced organ harvesting and allows the
Commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services to
designate additional countries who are known to participate in organ
harvesting.
Each bill and resolution that the Texas legislature has passed
addressing this extreme violation of human rights did so with
overwhelming bipartisan support. To the extent we faced barriers in
passing this legislation, they came from unexpected sources. For
instance, we faced a decent amount of opposition from church groups who
send missionaries to countries like China. They were fearful that their
volunteers would need to undergo surgery during their missions and be
unable to be reimbursed by their insurance companies. We were able to
overcome this opposition, pass the bill, and send it to Governor
Abbott.
As Senate Bill 1040 was working its way through the legislative
process, we were able to hold a press conference to allow those
impacted by forced organ harvesting to share their stories. I believe
these firsthand accounts were the reason we were able to pass this bill
with the overwhelming majority that we did.
We had several survivors of Chinese detention camps share their
powerful stories with us. They told us about the daily horrors of being
a religious and political prisoner and about how often those in the
camps would suddenly disappear--never to be seen again. They spoke of
the horror of knowing what was happening to those that vanished and
being unable to do anything to stop it. They shared that, because of
their healthy lifestyles and abstinence from alcohol, Falun Gong
practitioners and Uyghurs were most often targeted. I am confident that
their bravery in sharing their stories helped us to pass this bill,
which has now become a model for other states.
Bills modeled after Senate Bill 1040 have already been heard in the
Arizona House and the Utah Senate, where they successfully passed the
committees. A similar bill in the Missouri House recently received a
hearing, and Idaho and Illinois are also in the process of passing
legislation.
I am proud that the work we started in Texas is being modeled in
other states, and I am so thankful for the work that is being done by
the Commission to force this conversation at the national level.
______
Prepared Statement of Hon. Chris Smith
This hearing will come to order--and it is an important hearing,
one which addresses one of the most persistent, horrific human rights
abuses of our time, but sadly, one which has not received the
widespread attention and condemnation it deserves.
Almost 2 years ago, Sir Geoffrey Nice testified before a hearing I
chaired on forced organ harvesting at the Tom Lantos Human Rights
Commission.
For those that do not know, Sir Geoffrey was the lead prosecutor of
Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia. He is a serious man who engaged in a serious attempt
to investigate the evidence of forced organ harvesting as the chair of
the Independent People's Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting from
Prisoners of Conscience in the People's Republic of China--or, simply,
the China Tribunal.
Sir Geoffrey summarized for us that day the final judgment of the
China Tribunal this way--[The Tribunal] found ``unanimously and sure
beyond a reasonable doubt--that in China forced organ harvesting from
prisoners of conscience has been practiced for a substantial period of
time involving a substantial amount of victims.''
Among those victims, he said, were most certainly the most
vulnerable populations--prisoners, Falun Gong practitioners, and
Uyghurs.
Forced organ harvesting on an industrial scale in China is an
atrocity unmatched in its wickedness--one has to go back to the
horrific crimes committed in the 20th century by Hitler, Stalin, Mao,
or Pol Pot to find comparably systemic atrocities.
The numbers of those executed for their organs--some even before
they are brain dead--is staggering. Thus, the China Tribunal's final
assessment was that state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting in China
amounts to ``Crimes Against Humanity.''
So here we are, to again contemplate an unimaginable and
unacceptable crime.
We are here again because the Chinese Communist government is the
world's largest jailer of political prisoners and responsible for a
genocide targeting Uyghurs.
We are here again because there are those who doubt or ignored the
Tribunal's findings--pointing to the PRC's 2015 promise to only source
organs from voluntary donors, even though evidence presented by one of
our witnesses here today,
Matthew Robertson, demonstrates that this data has been falsified.
We are here again because nearly one year ago, the House passed the
Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act by an overwhelming 412-2 vote, and we
need the Senate to bring the bill across the finish line.
That landmark and bipartisan legislation authorizes the Secretary
of State to deny passports and visas to any individual involved in
illegal organ trafficking--in China and globally.
It also mandates annual reporting by the State Department on forced
organ harvesting globally and authorizes sanctions for individuals and
entities that facilitate organ harvesting.
In December 2023 a group of civil society groups, religious freedom
advocates, trade unions, bar associations, and human rights solidarity
groups wrote to Senator Ben Cardin and Senator James Risch--the Chair
and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee--urging
committee consideration.
They said this bill represented the ``strongest legislation ever
introduced by any country to combat'' the ``grotesque . . . atrocity''
of illegal organ trafficking.
We await Senate action.
Since the China Tribunal's final judgment, researchers continue to
investigate the Chinese Communist government and dive deep into the
data on organ harvesting. Indeed, we will hear from two of the best,
Ethan Gutmann and Matthew Robertson.
We will also look at how medical journals, bar associations, human
rights groups, the United Nations, corporations, and U.S. state
legislatures are grappling with the legal, ethical, and human rights
issues associated with being complicit in forced organ harvesting.
Dr. Maya Mitalipova from MIT and Dr. Tom Oliverson, a Texas state
representative, will discuss what has been done and what more needs to
be done to address the PRC's transplantation abuse--including the issue
of ``organ tourism,'' which often fuels the illegal organ trafficking
market.
For more than two decades, I have tried to shed light on forced
organ harvesting in China. At one hearing in my subcommittee, a Chinese
security official testified that he and his other security agents were
executing prisoners--with doctors, of course, there, and ambulances--to
harvest their organs for transplantation.
In the 1990's, Chinese doctors, nurses, and security guards came
forward to describe the harvesting of organs from prisoners and the
political economy of organ procurement for the elite members of the
Chinese Communist Party.
Today I'm announcing an initiative to seek firsthand witness
information on forced organ harvesting in China. I will be sending a
letter to Secretary of State Blinken asking him to offer rewards for
information from witnesses that will disrupt and deter the forced organ
harvesting industry in the PRC and bring accountability to those
engaged in this gruesome practice. The State Department offers rewards
for information on crimes against humanity and human trafficking.
I invite any of my colleagues to join me in signing this letter,
copies of which will be available for your consideration. Silence is
unacceptable--particularly from medical associations and corporations.
If they remain silent, they are the most at risk of complicity in a
crime against humanity.
We all bear some degree of responsibility to act. This is an
ongoing fight to demand transparency and justice for the victims of
forced organ harvesting and other horrific human rights abuses in the
PRC. If we don't act now, many more lives will be lost.
Thank you, and I look forward to hearing your compelling testimony.
______
Prepared Statement of Hon. Jeff Merkley
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for convening this hearing.
The issue of human rights abuse in the organ transplant system has
been a long-standing concern of this Commission. For example, back in
2006 the Commission reported that ``Executed prisoners likely are the
source of the majority of organs used in transplant operations in
China, according to reported statements from Chinese officials and
reports from U.S. human rights organizations.''
The notion that prisoners, including prisoners of conscience, might
be executed so that their organs can be transplanted into other people,
is horrific.
This is an area where we can say that international pressure
appears to have produced some results. In 2014, China pledged to stop
obtaining organs from executed prisoners and to ``ensure the voluntary
donation from citizens is the sole legal source of human organs . . .''
But have they done what they promised? Many experts have cast doubt
about whether China has adhered to its pledge and abided by
international standards. That is what we are here to explore.
A Congressional Research Service report notes that ``researchers on
organ harvesting in China have relied largely on circumstantial
evidence, logical inferences, and interviews to support their
arguments.''
In part, this problem can be blamed on Chinese authorities, who
make it so difficult to get accurate and trustworthy data. The system
is not transparent. The Chinese government has refused to agree to
independent or international investigations into its organ transplant
practices or provided information that refutes the allegations of human
rights violations.
We need facts to make assessments and formulate policy. We must
continue to demand that the Chinese government provide more
transparency so that we can assess whether they are meeting
international standards. But we must also take care not to let our
policy responses be based on circumstantial or outdated evidence.
Two years ago the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, in a hearing
chaired by today's chairman, Representative Smith, addressed this topic
with two of the witnesses with us today. I look forward to hearing any
new information that they have uncovered since then.
Chairman Smith is also the author of the Stop Forced Organ
Harvesting Act, which passed the House a year ago. I am a co-sponsor of
the Senate version and hope we can move it soon on our side.
Last, I observe that one clear action that the Chinese government
can take to provide assurance that its institutions are not harvesting
organs from executed prisoners is to stop executing prisoners. I urge
China to ratify the Second Optional Protocol to the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights aimed at the abolition of the
death penalty. I should note that for significant but different reasons
the United States should do so as well.
I look forward to the testimony of the witnesses.
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Witness Biographies
Ethan Gutmann, China Studies Research Fellow, Victims of Communism
Memorial Foundation and author of The Slaughter
Ethan Gutmann is a Senior Research Fellow in China Studies for the
Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and co-founder of the
International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China. He has
written for publications such as The Wall Street Journal Asia, The
Weekly Standard, National Review, and Investor's Business Daily, and
has provided briefings for the U.S. Congress, the Central Intelligence
Agency, the European Parliament, and the United Nations. In 2017,
Gutmann was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Gutmann's research
into Chinese surveillance, the laogai system, and the intersection of
Western business with Chinese security objectives began to receive
sustained attention following the publication of his first book, Losing
the New China, in 2004. His next book, The Slaughter: Mass Killings,
Organ Harvesting, and China's Secret Solution to Its Dissident Problem,
was released in 2014. He also co-authored the influential 2016
investigative report ``Bloody Harvest/The Slaughter: An Update.'' He is
currently working on a new book based on his personal interviews with
Uyghur and Kazakh refugees throughout Central Asia, titled The Xinjiang
Procedure.
Matthew Robertson, doctoral candidate, Australian National
University (Canberra) and co-author, ``Execution by Organ Procurement:
Breaching the Dead Donor Rule in China,'' American Journal of
Transplantation
Matthew Robertson is a China Studies Research Fellow with the
Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. He is concurrently a Ph.D.
student in political science at the Australian National University in
Canberra. His research interests include biopolitics, political
violence, and authoritarian politics. His dissertation, using
computational methods and process tracing, explores the political logic
of state control over citizen bodies in the case of China's organ
transplantation industry. Previously he has worked as a reporter,
researcher, and translator for several nonprofit organizations, and as
an interpreter (from Chinese) for financial services firms. His
research using statistical forensics to demonstrate the falsification
of Chinese organ donor registry data was published in the leading
journal of medical ethics, BMC Medical Ethics. Other peer-reviewed
publications he has co-authored have appeared in BMJ Open and The BMJ.
Maya (Maisam) Mitalipova, Ph.D., Director of the Human Stem Cell
Laboratory at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, MIT
Dr. Mitalipova is from the Almaty region of Kazakhstan. She has
advanced degrees in genetics and embryology from the Moscow Human
Genetics Institute. Her scientific research on animal cloning at the
University of Wisconsin in Madison and stem cell therapy are world
renowned. In 2001, working for an Australian biotech company, BresaGen,
Inc., she led a cell therapy program that established four human
embryonic stem cell lines from human embryos. These lines were approved
for Federal funding by the National Institutes of Health by President
George W. Bush. These four human stem cell lines were distributed
worldwide for research on various diseases. In August 2005 Maya joined
the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT, where she
accepted a position as Director of the Human Stem Cell Laboratory.
Working with world-renowned stem cell professor Rudolf Jaenisch, she is
conducting research on neurodegenerative diseases using stem cells.
Since joining MIT, Maya has isolated more than 20 human embryonic stem
cell lines and reprogrammed hundreds of induced pluripotent stem (iPS)
cell lines using a new technology of reprogramming somatic cells to
stem cells for the study of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
Tom Oliverson, M.D., Texas State Representative, Chair of the
Insurance Committee, Texas House of Representatives
Dr. Tom Oliverson is a practicing anesthesiologist who represents
Texas's 130th State House District in northwest Harris County,
including the communities of Tomball, Cypress, Waller, and Hockley. Dr.
Oliverson serves as the Chair of the House Committee on Insurance and
is a member of the Public Health and House Select Committee on
Healthcare Reform. Nationally, he is the President of the National
Council of Insurance Legislators (NCOIL), the immediate past National
Legislative Chair for the National Association of Christian Lawmakers,
and the Vice Chair of the National Council of Physician Legislators. He
has been chosen by his
Republican colleagues as ``Best Freshman Legislator'' and has
also been named to Texas Monthly's ``10 Best Legislators
List.'' He is widely regarded as an expert on healthcare policy
solutions, having authored multiple groundbreaking laws that
have established Texas as a national leader in healthcare
reform.