Prisoners' body parts never taken without family consent
( 2001-07-05 09:29 ) (1 )

China denied the allegations Wednesday made by a doctor who told the US Congress a Tianjin hospital routinely harvests organs from executed criminals.

Wang Guoqi, 38, told US congressmen last week he had removed the skin and corneas from corpses of more than 100 former prisoners.

Yet Wang was never professionally qualified for transplant operations, countered Tian Fuming, a neurology internist and vice-president of the Tianjin Armed Police Hospital in North China, at a press conference.

"The so-called systematic harvest of organs of executed prisoners for sale in Tianjin has been fabricated by Wang and Wu Hongda (Harry Wu) for their despicable motives,'' Tian said.

Trading human organs is strictly prohibited by Chinese law, and transplants, using organs of executed prisoners, are clearly listed as part of those rules.

"China does not allow any work unit or individual to willfully handle corpses or organs after executions have been carried out,'' said Chen Su, deputy director of Information Office of Tianjin municipal government.

Medical and research institutes may take organs from an executed convict only after they obtain the written consent of condemned prisoner or their families as well as approval from the relevant public health department and judicial departments, Chen said.

The official suggested that Wang fabricated lies in order to seek political asylum.

"Our hospital has never carried out human organ transplant work, so it certainly could never carry out so-called organ trading,'' Tian said.

Wang, who claimed to be a burn specialist, told the US Congress that he had obtained a diploma of higher learning in surgery and human organic structure from a health school of the armed police in Tianjin, but Tian said the school only offered vocational training.

"As a medical worker in an elementary professional position, Wang Guoqi could only carry out ordinary burns treatment and did not have the skills or the power to take part in human organ transplant operations,'' Tian said.

Moreover, during the period Wang worked there, the hospital was "too small to conduct cornea and kidney transplant operations, and the burn unit only treated minor and medium-level burns by autograft,'' the vice-president said.

Tian showed reporters a record book that indicated Wang stayed at the hospital in October of 1995, the same time Wang claimed to have gone to North China's Hebei Province to harvest organs of executed prisoners.

Tian said his hospital does carry out skin-grafts for burn patients, but he insisted skin used for those operations come from other Tianjin hospitals.