Promoting Ethics in Medicine

World Summit against Forced Organ Harvesting: An Alarm for Humankind

Washington, D.C. September 1, 2021 — Today, leading medical ethics NGO Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) announced, on behalf of the five co-hosting organizations from the United States, Europe, and Asia, the World Summit on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting, a series of online webinars taking place between Sept 17-26, 2021.

More than 35 international experts will discuss the abusive practice of forced organ harvesting from medical, legal, political, news media, civil society, and policy-making perspectives and elaborate on the impact this atrocity has on humankind. The event organizers also announce the launch of a Universal Declaration that will be presented to the public at the end of the World Summit.

A first in the field of medical ethics and human rights in both breadth and scope, the event, open to experts and the public, addresses the forced harvesting of organs from living people not only as a violation of medical ethics and basic human rights, but also as an atrocity against humankind. The systematic killing of people in order to harvest their organs on an industrial scale is a crime that is unprecedented in all of human history.

The co-hosting NGOs stand with the global community in sympathy and compassion in hopes of bringing an end to a procedure that violates the inherent dignity of human beings and the universal values of personal autonomy and institutional integrity upon which civil societies depend. The five NGOs include: Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH), USA; Coordination des Associations et des Particuliers pour la Liberté de Conscience (CAP Freedom of Conscience), France; Taiwan Association for International Care of Organ Transplants (TAICOT), Taiwan; Korea Association for Ethical Organ Transplants (KAEOT), South Korea; and the Transplant Tourism Research Association (TTRA), Japan.

Experts, parliamentarians, and witnesses from 19 countries will speak at the World Summit on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting to inform, educate, and encourage. The systematic organ harvesting from living people taking place in China is a politically motivated act, as it targets religious groups and minorities, but it also attacks the foundations of our civilization.

This profit-based practice in China is now being challenged by five non-profit organizations. The speakers, alarmed by credible independent and public investigations including the China Tribunal and United Nations experts and rapporteurs, wish to see an end to forced live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims, and Christians in China.

Event host Dr. Torsten Trey, Executive Director of Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, states: "Forced organ harvesting from living people is an unfathomable, unspeakable disgrace to humankind. Never before in history has an authoritarian regime persecuted living people by killing them with the goal to eradicate them through the installation of a self-propelling, profit-driven organ harvesting infrastructure, potentially turning organ recipients into accomplices as their demand for a transplant surgery might have fueled the transplant abuse. This should be of concern to all humankind.”

For further information and registration: https://worldsummitcpfoh.info/

Contact:     Dr. Ann Corson 
Email:        [email protected]

World Summit on Organ Harvesting Presented by Five NGOs

Forced organ harvesting is an unethical and illegal yet highly profitable practice where organs are removed from non-consenting, healthy people and sold to patients for fast-tracked transplantation operations. Although illegal organ trafficking has occurred in several regions, it is only in China that it is government sanctioned and under military control, involving disenfranchised, vulnerable populations.

In response to growing concerns, five international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who understand this urgent problem have come together to call for an effective and immediate intervention by the international community to combat forced organ harvesting. With over 30 speakers and panelists, this six-day World Summit is unprecedented in both depth and scope.

The NGOs have called upon leading experts from the fields of medicine, law, government, and the news media to join the World Summit on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting. Their mission is to give voice to a global momentum that will inform the public, dispel complacency and inspire attendees and government leaders to act without delay.

For over two decades the Chinese Communist Party has mobilized its state apparatus to monetize the bodies of prisoners of conscience and those deemed undesirable by the state, making medical professionals complicit executioners. Second only to the United States in transplant volumes, China aspires to lead the world in transplant medicine and science.

Persecuted by the millions, religious Falun Gong prisoners of conscience are the largest group of prisoners of conscience in detention in China today and are the primary victims of forced organ harvesting and other medical abuses. Other religious, cultural and political prisoners, and Chinese citizens, are also reportedly killed for their organs.

Co-hosting organizations include:

Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH)
A non-profit organization founded by medical doctors in 2006, nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016 and 2018, and honored with the Mother Teresa Award for Social Justice in 2019. DAFOH provides the medical community and society with objective findings of unethical and illegal organ harvesting while promoting and protecting ethical standards to preserve human dignity.

Coordination des Associations et des Particuliers pour la Liberté de Conscience (CAP Freedom of Conscience)
A European NGO created in 1995, with United Nations Consultative Status, CAP is dedicated to protecting the Right of Freedom of Religion and Belief globally.

Taiwan Association for International Care of Organ Transplants (TAICOT)
A Taiwanese-based organization with the mission to end forced organ harvesting, TAICOT brings transparency to organ transplantation so that patients, their families, and donors will correctly understand the risk and medical safety issues involved in the process.

Korea Association for Ethical Organ Transplants (KAEOT)
An organization based in Korea that is an extension of the International Association for Ethical Organ Transplants (IAEOT), KAOT works with government leaders, NGOs, and local communities to raise awareness on issues related to forced organ harvesting.

Transplant Tourism Research Association (TTRA)
A Japanese-based educational organization designed to highlight unethical issues surrounding transplantation practices and promote legal action through various community-centered events.

Message from the Editor, Ann F. Corson, M.D.

DAFOH newsletter readers are cordially invited to attend the upcoming World Summit on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting being presented digitally by five international non-governmental organizations concerned with ethics and human rights.

The importance of combating the live forced organ harvesting of innocent prisoners of conscience in China cannot be underestimated. The world’s attention must be focused on the decades of illegal, unethical transplant practices and human rights abuses being perpetrated by the Chinese regime.

Global societies have become increasingly totalitarian since lockdowns were imposed in lockstep by countries around the world in early 2020. The world’s people have witnessed dramatic loss of personal liberties and unprecedented censorship with suppression of rational and ethical debate. Democratic countries around the world have lost freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom to congregate, freedom to travel, freedom to dissent, and freedom of bodily integrity.

Recent events have demonstrated to the world’s people how rapidly the behavior and ethics of global governments can change. If the government of China has been able to incarcerate its own innocent citizens to monetize their organs with impunity for decades, how soon might the live forced organ harvesting on demand of innocent citizens become standard transplant practice in your country or mine?

Awaken to the threat this atrocity poses to us all. Attend the World Summit on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting and act to protect the liberty, dignity, and freedom of humanity.