Body Parts For Sale

By Christine Gorman Reported By Elaine Rivera/New York And Mia Turner/Beijing

The scene is a quiet hotel room in midtown Manhattan on a sunny day in February. Two Chinese nationals are concluding a business deal in rapid-fire Mandarin. But this is no ordinary transaction. The men are discussing a straightforward proposition to sell the kidneys, corneas, livers and lungs of executed Chinese prisoners for tens of thousands of dollars. Unbeknown to one of the would-be organ brokers, however, his U.S.-based contact is Harry Wu, the human-rights activist who spent 19 years in Chinese jails and who has just secretly captured their entire exchange on videotape.

With this tape, Wu says, he finally has proof of what he has long charged: that the Chinese are exchanging human body parts for hard currency. And last week the FBI announced it had arrested two men: a former Chinese prosecutor named Wang Chengyong, 41, and Fu Xingqi, 35, his alleged accomplice. Wang's lawyer claims his client was set up. The Chinese government said that "such incidents never happen in China" and that any violations of Chinese law would be punished. But the arrests, which come at a time of increasingly desperate organ shortages, served to focus new international attention on the harvesting of organs from dead prisoners--a practice that is legal in China as long as the donations are voluntary.

No one, not even human-rights advocates, believes organs should never be harvested for humane medical purposes. Rather, the controversy arises, as it always does with transplants, over how those donations are solicited and under what circumstances they can be used.

Wu and other human-rights activists claim that Chinese authorities simply confiscate whatever body parts they need after an execution, rarely asking the condemned prisoners or their families for permission beforehand. Doctors at military hospitals then reportedly transplant the organs into wealthy foreigners willing to pay anywhere from $10,000 to $40,000 for the operation. Some activists fear that Chinese officials may have broadened the kinds of crimes punishable by death in order to line their own pockets. "We estimate there are about 6,000 prisoners executed in China each year," says William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International, U.S.A., "and about 90% of transplanted kidneys come from executed prisoners."

Wu decided to become an undercover agent after he got a tip that Wang had approached a dialysis center in New York City with an offer to provide its clients with human kidneys at a steep discount. Wang reportedly told doctors that he could, for a 25% fee, arrange for patients to receive a kidney transplant in China without what is often a two-year wait. Rather than go along with the deal, however, the physicians put Wang in touch with Wu, who rigged up a camcorder and posed as the center's director.

Like any good negotiator, Wu questioned whether Wang could really deliver the goods. With the tape rolling, Wang eagerly showed him official-looking documents stating he had been a prosecutor on Hainan Island in southern China. He assured Wu that he had attended numerous executions and could coordinate the extraction of body parts from 50 of the 200 prisoners killed on Hainan each year.

Wu signed two contracts with Wang and then arranged for the organ broker to meet someone he said was a member of the board, but who was really an FBI agent in disguise. This time both Wang and Fu were present, and according to the federal complaint, Wang "discussed the methods by which Chinese prisoners are executed." (Amnesty International says that if corneas are needed, prisoners are shot in the chest; those who are slated to donate kidneys are shot in the head.) Fu also guaranteed that any lungs would come from nonsmokers. After haggling a bit over the price of various organs, the agent wrapped up the deal--and then had Wang and Fu arrested. If convicted, they face maximum sentences of five years in prison and fines of $250,000.

While it is illegal in the U.S. to buy or sell human organs, there may still be reason for concern. Take, for example, a new "Life for a Life" bill introduced last month in the Missouri state legislature. It would allow prisoners on death row to exchange a kidney or bone-marrow transplant for a sentence of life without parole. Although doctors have attacked the bill on moral grounds, arguing that a choice between death or transplantation is never free, defense attorneys have called it "fascinating." Strictly speaking, of course, the prisoners wouldn't be selling their organs. But they would be buying themselves a lot more time.

--Reported by Elaine Rivera/New York and Mia Turner/Beijing