Organ transplants again

The British Transplantation Society has issued a statement accusing Chinese authorities of harvesting the organs of thousands of executed prisoners every year to sell for transplants. A related BBC News report states:

The British Transplantation Society says an accumulating weight of evidence suggests the organs of thousands of executed prisoners in China are being removed for transplants without consent.

Professor Stephen Wigmore, who chairs the society's ethics committee, told the BBC that the speed of matching donors and patients, sometimes as little as a week, implied prisoners were being selected before execution.

The first comprehensive report on this issue of which I am aware is Human Rights Watch, China: Organ Procurement and Judicial Execution in China (August 1994). The research behind this report is extremely thorough and it is still worth reading.