Time: Sat Oct 18 07:35:11 1997
Date: Sat, 18 Oct 1997 07:30:39 -0700
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLF: "Black Market For Kidneys From Chinese Prisoners" (fwd)
[This text is formatted in Courier 11, non-proportional spacing.]
Dear America,
Meet "Dr. Die."
This "market" operates here too.
/s/ Paul Mitchell
http://www.supremelaw.org
<snip>
[ABC News logo] [Sponsored by Hotmail]
[Image] [Transcripts]
[Image]
"Blood Money:"
"Black Market For Kidneys From Chinese Prisoners"
Oct. 15, 1997
DIANE SAWYER
Good evening, and welcome to PrimeTime. Tonight, we bring you a
story we are sure that you have never seen before. We have
learned that human organs are being harvested from executed
Chinese prisoners and then sold to patients around the world,
including here in the United States.
How many? Well, human rights organizations estimate that since
1990, more than 10,000 kidneys from Chinese prisoners have been
sold, potentially bringing in tens of millions of dollars to the
Chinese military.
For the past three months, chief investigative correspondent
Brian Ross has followed what is really a black market in human
organs. As we begin, you should know that this report contains
scenes of graphic violence, and we let it stand as a warning.
BRIAN ROSS, ABC NEWS
(VO) On a sunny day in New York City, in a hotel room
overlooking Central Park, we saw and heard something that for
years the United States government has officially maintained does
not happen. But our undercover videotape tells a different
story, documenting for the first time in this country a grisly,
but lucrative international black market -- the buying and
selling of human organs. In this case, a kidney from the bodies
of prisoners executed far away in China.
DR DAI (PH)
(through translator) You will surely be satisfied with the
arrangements for you, and the operation will surely be
successful. I can guarantee this, no problem.
BRIAN ROSS
(VO) This was the starting point of a three-month PrimeTime Live
investigation that took us from Central Park south in New York
City to the back alleys of Hong Kong, to a restricted military
hospital in southern China, equipped with the latest in American
medical technology.
DR RONALD GUTTMAN, INTERNATIONAL TRANSPLANTATION SOCIETY
It's a money-making operation. They're in business. This is an
industry. And they're moving it around the world.
BRIAN ROSS
(VO) Dr Ronald Guttman, an adviser to the International
Transplantation Society, says it's been an open secret among
doctors who do transplants that the Chinese military has been
selling the kidneys of executed prisoners -- perhaps thousands of
them since the late 1980s.
DR RONALD GUTTMAN
In my opinion, a very barbaric and disgusting kind of practice.
It makes me cringe. And I think exposing it is very important.
BRIAN ROSS
(VO) It's a question of supply and demand, a ready supply of
prisoners to be executed, like these men, and a huge, unmet
demand for kidneys around the world. This Chinese military
videotape made in 1992, and never intended to be seen outside
official circles, shows the condemned men and women paraded
through the streets on their way to an execution field.
This is a country which last year executed more than 4,000
people. Some just petty thieves. It's not known what crimes
these prisoners were convicted of or whether the organs of any of
them were about to be sold. But the tape shows guards precisely
lining up their guns at the base of the skull. That makes
retrieval of kidneys and organs much easier. And Dr Guttman says
certain medical preparations begin well before the execution.
DR RONALD GUTTMAN
They're given anti-coagulant drugs so the blood won't clot when
they're executed. They're given muscle relaxants.
BRIAN ROSS
(VO) And then, with a large crowd watching, the command is
given.
SOLDIER
Fire!
(Gunshots)
DR ZHOU WEI CHENG (PH)
(through translator) After the execution, doctors removed the
prisoner and placed him in the ambulance.
BRIAN ROSS
(VO) A Chinese doctor, Zhou Wei Cheng, who now lives in Atlanta,
told us what happens once the prisoners are dead, based on what
he saw at his hospital just before he fled China in 1994.
DR ZHOU WEI CHENG
(through translator) First, there was a cut from the back to
extract the kidneys. Dr Chen (ph) from the surgical department
also took out the eyeballs and a piece of skin from the dead
prisoner's abdomen. The orthopedist cut out one section of the
bone from the lower leg. All the extracted organs were placed in
a special kind of liquid to maintain the freshness.
Then they rushed back to the hospital. In the hospital, two
patients were lying on the operating table waiting for the
transplants. When the ambulance arrived, the kidneys were placed
into the patients' bodies. All the other organs were only for
laboratory experiments.
HARRY WU, FORMER POLITICAL PRISONER
The rifle right away placed in the back.
BRIAN ROSS
(VO) The graphic tape was secretly removed from military
archives and smuggled out of China by an underground group of
dissidents and provided to PrimeTime Live by a former political
prisoner who spent almost 19 years in a Chinese prison and has
become China's most outspoken and despised critic, Harry Wu.
HARRY WU
This is fundamental violation of human rights.
BRIAN ROSS
(VO) For the last three years, Wu has been traveling the world
trying to expose the black market in prisoners' body parts, which
Wu says has spread from Asia to Europe and now to the United
States, as he showed us with a recent copy of a Chinese language
newspaper published in New York.
HARRY WU
There's a small piece advertisement right here.
BRIAN ROSS
(on camera) What does that say?
HARRY WU
"Kidney transplant in Mainland China. Don't miss the
opportunity. Call."
BRIAN ROSS
(VO) So we did. Our call to the advertised number in
Bridgeport, Connecticut, led to this meeting in a New York City
hotel with a Chinese doctor and his wife, a Dr and Mrs Dai, who
-- with our hidden cameras rolling -- told us they had already
helped provide kidneys for several Americans but, that because of
Harry Wu, everything had to be kept very quiet.
DR DAI
(through translator) You've probably heard of Harry Wu. I have
to be careful because people calling us might have the same
agenda as Harry Wu. We are fully aware of the sensitive nature
of this issue. Usually we don't talk about this.
BRIAN ROSS
(VO) With the help of a woman who works with Harry Wu, we told
the Chinese doctor that a kidney was needed for a sick brother.
The doctor told us no problem, that he knew, a month in advance,
that a new batch of prisoners' kidneys would soon be available.
DR DAI
(through translator) At the end of July, there will definitely
be kidney sources that will match your brother's situation, in
age and everything. If you are willing to go there around the
20th of July to receive a kidney from the July batch.
BRIAN ROSS
(VO) The total price for a transplanted kidney, according to Dr
Dai, $30,000 in cash, with a downpayment to be made in New York.
MRS DAI
(through translator) If you decide to go ahead with this, then
you pay us $5,000, and we will order and reserve a kidney and a
bed in the hospital.
BRIAN ROSS
(VO) The hospital we were to be sent to is a hospital which, as
the sign outside in English says, belongs to the PLA, the
Peoples' Liberation Army, called the Nanfang Hospital, three
hours north of Hong Kong. We came here as tourists, given the
Chinese government's denial that it's in the business of selling
organs of executed prisoners, and we asked two Chinese dissidents
to carry a hidden camera inside.
This is the heart of the military's kidney business, an elaborate
medical complex where patients told us numerous foreigners had
just received or were waiting to receive kidney transplants among
hundreds of foreigners who have received kidneys here in the last
few years.
APPLE YOONUCH, TRANSPLANT PATIENT
I just talked to the doctor ...
BRIAN ROSS
(VO) One of them was 38-year-old Apple Yoonuch of Bangkok.
APPLE YOONUCH
First time, I asked the doctor, "Where, where can I get a
kidney?" And they said, "From a prisoner."
BRIAN ROSS
(VO) That prisoner's kidney is now in her body, and even though
it saved her life, the experience has left Ms Yoonuch full of
regret and willing to talk with PrimeTime, breaking the circle of
silence that has surrounded what goes on at the Nanfang military
hospital. First, she said, doctors in China took her blood and
tissue samples and then sent her home to wait.
APPLE YOONUCH
Third of January, the doctor called me that there will be an
execution. It means that prisoners, some prisoners are going to
be shot dead.
BRIAN ROSS
(on camera) And one of them matches up with you?
APPLE YOONUCH
Yes. So I have to come over and prepare myself to be -- to get
the operation, kidney operation.
BRIAN ROSS
(VO) Six days later, according to the local paper, 45 prisoners
were sentenced to death and executed on the same day, including
one who apparently, even before he had been sentenced to death,
was found to have the same blood and tissue type as Apple
Yoonuch.
(on camera) So they were shot in the morning, and the transplant
was in the afternoon?
APPLE YOONUCH
In the afternoon, yes.
BRIAN ROSS
Were there also other people who got transplants?
APPLE YOONUCH
Yes, yes.
BRIAN ROSS
With kidneys from executed prisoners?
APPLE YOONUCH
Yes.
BRIAN ROSS
(VO) In the course of our investigation, we also found that a
big American corporation had played an important role here -- the
WR Grace Company, which, through a joint business venture with
the Chinese army, equipped and helped to run a kidney dialysis
center, where, in addition to routine dialysis, transplant
patients are kept going while they await surgery upstairs.
(on camera) WR Grace sold its kidney dialysis business last
year, and a company spokesman denied that current management knew
anything about the use of prisoners' kidneys for transplants.
But a former top Grace executive who regularly visited the
hospital in China told PrimeTime that he was well aware of what
was going on there.
(VO) In our final meeting in New York with the Chinese doctor
and his wife who told us they were here on student visas and had
connections back in China, we were assured the best medical care
awaited us and that the kidney we bought would come from a
healthy prisoner who would be thoroughly tested before he was
shot.
MRS DAI
(through translator) Regarding the prisoners' health, they are
all given physical check-ups and blood tests. They don't carry
hepatitis or anything like that. All those carrying these
diseases will be excluded. You see, there are so many criminals,
they have a lot to choose from.
BRIAN ROSS
(VO) And then we gave the doctor what he had come for -- $5,000
in cash, downpayment for a healthy kidney from a prisoner in
China. Federal law and the state laws of New York and Connecticut
make it illegal to buy or sell any human organs. (on camera) Dr
Dai?
DR DAI
Yes.
BRIAN ROSS
Brian Ross from ABC News.
(VO) And when we entered the room with our camera showing, the
doctor immediately denied knowing anything about prisoners or
executions.
(on camera) Aren't you here selling the organs of prisoners who
have been executed in China?
DR DAI
No.
BRIAN ROSS
You're not?
DR DAI
No.
BRIAN ROSS
What do you think the $5,000 was for?
DR DAI
It's not selling, it's introduce, it's kind of service charge.
All right?
BRIAN ROSS
How many people have you introduced to China? How many?
DR DAI
I don't want to -- I think it's my business.
BRIAN ROSS
(VO) By some estimates, the kidney business has meant tens of
millions of dollars to the Chinese military which, even as the
black market has expanded around the world, continues to deny any
such business actually exists.
In a letter to PrimeTime, the Chinese embassy in Washington
suggested we stop production of our story saying, "The so-called
the sale of criminals' organs in China is a deliberate
fabrication with ill intentions." And that in the rare instance
when a prisoner's organ is used, the death row criminals
voluntarily sign up. Dr Guttman says that makes a mockery of
international principles adopted in the wake of Nazi medical
experiments.
DR RONALD GUTTMAN
There's no such thing as, first of all, as of consent when you're
talking about incarcerated people to say, "Well, we can produce a
piece of paper that the prisoner has given consent before we kill
him," is a kind of ludicrous thing.
BRIAN ROSS
(VO) No other country in the world is known to use the organs of
prisoners, except for China, which, based on our PrimeTime Live
investigation appears to have turned its chilling executions of
thousands of people into a multimillion dollar black market of a
kind the world has never seen.
DIANE SAWYER
The US State Department says that it has received reports in the
past about organs from prisoners being sold but could not confirm
them. They told us they were eager to see our story tonight and
will talk with Harry Wu.
Copyright ABC News. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed in any form.
Transcripts produced by Federal Document Clearing House.
# # #
===========================================================================
Paul Andrew Mitchell, Sui Juris : Counselor at Law, federal witness 01
B.A.: Political Science, UCLA; M.S.: Public Administration, U.C.Irvine 02
tel: (520) 320-1514: machine; fax: (520) 320-1256: 24-hour/day-night 03
email: [address in tool bar] : using Eudora Pro 3.0.3 on 586 CPU 04
website: http://www.supremelaw.org : visit the Supreme Law Library now 05
ship to: c/o 2509 N. Campbell, #1776 : this is free speech, at its best 06
Tucson, Arizona state : state zone, not the federal zone 07
Postal Zone 85719/tdc : USPS delays first class w/o this 08
_____________________________________: Law is authority in written words 09
As agents of the Most High, we came here to establish justice. We shall 10
not leave, until our mission is accomplished and justice reigns eternal. 11
======================================================================== 12
[This text formatted on-screen in Courier 11, non-proportional spacing.] 13
Return to Table of Contents for
Supreme Law School: E-mail