Transplant Allegation Is A Lie: Chinese Doctor

The self-claimed "burns specialist" who claimed to have removed skin from nearly 100 executed Chinese prisoners for transplant in front of US congressmen last week has never been professionally qualified for transplant operations, a Chinese doctor said Wednesday.

"The so-called systematic harvest of organs of executed prisoners for sale in Tianjin has been concocted by Wang Guoqi and Wu Hongda for their despicable motives," said Tian Fuming, vice- president of the Tianjin General Hospital of the People's Armed Police, where Wang once worked.

Tian, a neurological internist, was speaking at a press conference held by the State Council's Information Office, Wednesday, in Beijing and attended by more than 50 Chinese and foreign journalists.

Wang told the US congress, in a hearing last week, that he obtained a diploma) of higher learning in surgery and human organic structure from a health school of the Armed Police.

In fact, Doctor Tian said, that the school only offers vocational training and Wang himself had been only a junior medical worker, without the qualifications or ability to participate in transplant operations.

Moreover, during the time Wang worked at the armed police hospital in Tianjin, about two hours east of Beijing, "the hospital was so small that it was inadequate to conduct cornea and kidney transplant operations, and the burn unit only treats minor and medium-level burns by autograft," Doctor Tian said.

Wang claimed that he went to Hebei Province in October 1995 to "harvest" organs of executed prisoners and created a sensational description of it.

But the hospital vice-president presented a record book to journalists which shows that Wang stayed at the hospital all that month.

Wang said in the hearing that he saw three doctors remove the kidneys of an executed prisoner who was not yet dead, and "when they finished the prisoner was still breathing and his heart continued to beat."

The vice-president countered by asking that "if a person's blood dried out, can his heart continue to beat? Wang even didn't think about the medical ABCs when fabricating lies."

Wang was transferred to the Maternal and Infant Health Care Center of Hedong District of Tianjin in 1997, and he never worked there.

When asked why Wang fabricated all the lies, Chen Su, deputy director of the Information Office of Tianjin Municipal People's Government, said that he did so to "seek political asylum."

Wu Hongda, also known as Harry Wu, who collaborated with Wang in this case, has been an anti-China activist.

He has been notorious for claiming to secretly videotape a heart operation in China as a kidney transplant operation, and claiming ordinary tombs as those of executed prisoners, just in order to support his allegation that the Chinese government supports the sale of body organs of executed prisoners without consent from them or their family members, according to the information officer.

Chen stressed that trading in human organs is strictly prohibited by law in China, and transplants, using organs of executed prisoners, are under clear-cut restrictive stipulations.

Medical and research institutes may take organs of an executed convict only after they obtained the convict's signature before his death or consent from his family members, as well as approval from the concerning public health department of the government and judicial departments.






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