Jon Holato

According to a report by former Canadian secretary of state for the Asia Pacific region David Kilgour and human rights lawyer David Matas, the Chinese military is harvesting organs from unwilling prison inmates and using them in transplants on a wide scale, including foreign recipients. Naturally, Chinese officials have denied any truth to these allegations, but Kilgour and Matas’ report includes interviews with organ recipients in 30 countries and Canadian hospital staff who have cared for more than 100 patients that received suspicious transplants in China. “The involvement of the People’s Liberation Army in these transplants is widespread,” Kilgour said at a press conference.

Like many civilian hospitals in rural China, military hospitals turned to selling organs to make up for government funding cuts in the 1980s.

The report states that over 100 Canadians are now receiving such transplants each year, and that the number is slowly rising. The authors have lobbied pharmaceutical companies to stop selling organ anti-rejection drugs to China, and are seeking to make traveling to China for organ transplants illegal.

Normally on a controversial and offensive issue it is fair to incorporate both sides of a story. However, in rare cases such as this I don’t think there necessarily is an “other side to the story.” And even if there were, I’m not sure I’d want to hear it. This is just blatant disregard for human rights and equalities and can be filed under the harshest definition of inhumane. Granted, this is sort of preaching to the choir as China is a communist state and doesn’t have the most shining of human rights records. However, governmental structure aside, we’re all human beings and it doesn’t matter what ethnicity or race you are, there is a certain level of morals or ethics which all human beings are innately obliged to follow. Certainly I am not the one to decide where this standard would lie, however I’m pretty sure the acts taking place here would not be allowed.