ROME — China is stepping up its efforts to persuade the international medical community that it has stopped using executed prisoners as organ donors, sending a high-level delegation to a Vatican conference amid continued skepticism that the practice has ended.
China’s former vice minister of health, Dr. Huang Jiefu, acknowledged Monday that reforms to China’s organ transplant program have been slow and “very difficult.” But he insisted that the measures taken to outlaw the practice have made significant progress even though China still “has a long way to go” to meet its transplant needs.
“From Jan. 1, 2015, organ donation from voluntary civilian organ donors has become the only legitimate source of organ transplantations,” he said in an interview at China’s embassy to Italy. “This is the whole story.”
Huang will deliver a speech at the Vatican conference Tuesday amid complaints from human rights groups and organ trafficking watchdogs that the Vatican is effectively endorsing a “whitewash” by inviting him.
“Without transparency, verification of alleged reforms is impossible,” said Dr. Torsten Trey, executive director of the group Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, which called on the Vatican conference to demand China provide documented evidence and independent scrutiny about its practices.
The Vatican has defended the invitation, which comes as Pope Francis seeks to improve ties with Beijing and bring its estimated 12 million Catholics under Rome’s wing.
Huang publicly acknowledged in 2005 that China harvested executed inmates’ organs for transplant, and a paper he co-authored six years later reported that as many as 90 percent of Chinese transplant surgeries using organs from dead people came from those put to death.
