Newborn babies are being harvested for their organs. Experts worry that the CCP is using newborn babies as organ production machines. The picture shows premature babies in a hospital in Anhui. schematic diagram. (China Photos/Getty Images)
[The Epoch Times, March 06, 2023](Interview and report by Epoch Times reporter Jiang Feng) Doctors from Renji Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiaotong University recently published an article on the website of “American Journal of Transplantation”, reporting two cases of kidney transplantation using newborn babies The case for a patient with end-stage renal failure. The kidneys of the two newborns were removed one day and three days after birth, respectively. Medical experts said that it takes at least several weeks for a newborn to be matched for kidney transplantation, and doctors may have done the matching by drawing amniotic fluid before the baby was born. Experts worry that newborns in China may become organs for the CCP to produce.
There are two cases in this paper published on January 11, 2023. In the first case, the article claimed that the baby’s parents agreed to donate a kidney on the second day after the baby was born. Parents agreed to stop life-sustaining treatment (WLST) and to perform renal DCD (organ donation after cardiac death) on the infant’s 2nd day of life. Fifteen minutes after withdrawal of maintenance therapy, mechanical cardiac arrest occurred. Five minutes later, doctors pronounced the baby dead.
According to the New York-Presbyterian website, the maximum time a kidney can be kept outside the body is 24 to 48 hours. In other words, within 3 days after the baby was born, the doctor must complete the transplant matching and kidney transplantation.
In the second case, the article claims, the baby’s parents agreed to undergo renal DCD (organ donation after cardiac death) on the 3rd day of life. Twenty-five minutes after life support was stopped, the cardiac arrest was performed mechanically, and the baby was pronounced dead by doctors five minutes later. This means that within 5 days after the baby is born, doctors must complete the transplant matching test and transplant operation.
Organs Targeted Before Babies Are Born
Zain Khalpey, an associate professor of surgery, medical imaging, physiological sciences, and biomedical engineering at the University of Arizona, told The Epoch Times on March 4 that organ transplants usually take 1 to 14 weeks to cross-match patients.
“You have to do a battery of tests to see if the donor and recipient are a match. These tests include blood and tissue typing, and cross-matching to ensure compatibility, especially with the kidney.”
“The length of time it takes to complete the (pre-transplant matching) step depends on a number of factors, including organ availability, complexity and urgency of testing. So in general, the process of matching a newborn for a kidney transplant can take several weeks. to a few months.”
According to information on the website of Barnes-Jewish Hospital in the United States, the evaluation of organ donors, including donor matching, may take 1 to 6 months to complete.
The UCLA Health website shows that a donor’s checkup can take six months or more to complete and, depending on the test results, additional evaluations may be required.
So how did the doctors at Shanghai Renji Hospital complete the matching within 3 to 5 days after the baby was born?
Halpe speculates that doctors matched the baby by drawing amniotic fluid long before the baby was born.
According to information on the website of Shanghai Jiao Tong University on February 27, Renji Hospital has “successfully” performed 22 newborn donor kidney transplants so far.
Halpe said that Renji Hospital used newborn babies as kidney donors in such a large number that it was suspected that they were using newborn babies as machines for producing organs.
He said that in Western countries, the recipients of newborn kidney transplants are usually very young babies, but the recipients in the Shanghai Renji Hospital paper were 34 and 25 years old. “It’s very odd to do that. It looks like it’s a fabrication (pattern).”
Regarding Yanji Hospital’s use of babies as transplant donors, Halpe said: “It’s untested and unethical. If it’s for another child, it’s fine. But if it’s for an adult, I don’t know. would be skeptical. The use of newborn babies is unacceptable because they have no voice.”
Technical and Ethical Issues in Transplanting Kidneys from Infants to Adults
Halpe said infant kidneys are rarely transplanted into adults in the West because of technical and ethical issues.
Jalpe reviews the history of kidney transplant surgery. In 1954, Joseph Murray, a doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital affiliated to Harvard Medical School, performed the first successful kidney transplant in human history. The hospital is also where Jalpe trained in cardiac surgery.
Dr. Murray performed the first neonatal organ transplant in 1963, when a baby received a kidney from an identical twin. The recipient died of an infection two and a half years after receiving the transplant.
“Since then, however, neonatal kidney transplantation has become a routine procedure for infants with renal failure. The success rate of neonatal kidney transplantation is high. Some studies have reported a one-year survival rate of more than 90 percent. However, neonatal kidney transplantation Kidney transplants to adults are rare.”
The first technical issue is that there may be a clinical mismatch between donor and recipient.
“Neonatal kidneys are smaller than adults, and the size mismatch can lead to complications such as thrombosis or stenosis and renal vein occlusion. In addition, neonatal kidneys are not as developed as adult kidneys, which can lead to differences in function, which in turn make (the patient) vulnerable .”
Another major problem is that the babies who are used as donors often have congenital abnormalities.
“Congenital anomalies are common in newborns, some of which can affect the function of the donated kidney. Donated kidneys with congenital anomalies may be more susceptible to infection or have reduced filtering capacity. Therefore, using an infant kidney for an adult transplant may result in higher risk of complications.”
In addition, there are ethical concerns about transplanting organs from newborns to adults.
“Newborn babies are vulnerable. Using their organs for transplants raises concerns about the right to know, consent and coercion. In some cases, parents may feel pressured to donate their baby’s organs, especially if they Being told that donation will save an adult’s life. Stress can be heightened if the baby’s parents come from disadvantaged backgrounds or lack access to healthcare. Using a newborn’s kidney for an adult transplant disproportionately affects certain populations, triggering criticism Concerns about fairness and justice.”
Another potential ethical issue is the commercialization of newborn kidney transplants, Halpe said.
“In countries with long waiting times for transplantation, the use of neonatal kidneys for adult transplantation may be seen as a way to increase the supply of transplanted organs, which may lead to the commodification of neonatal organs and the exploitation of vulnerable groups.” It was reported Saying that there are people selling organs from deceased newborn babies. These are serious ethical issues.”
Why did Shanghai Renji Hospital do the opposite?
Despite these technical and ethical issues, Shanghai Renji Hospital still uses neonates as donors for adult transplants. According to Jalpe, this may be due to an “advantage” of the baby’s organs.
While studying at Harvard Medical School, Halpe did a lot of research on graft regulation and graft mismatch, and co-authored a paper on it with Jeffrey L. Platt, a professor of transplant surgery at the University of Michigan.
“If a baby or newborn kidney is transplanted, it lasts (in the recipient) for many years. That’s the appeal (of Chinese doctors) of using newborn organs because of the amount of antibodies on their kidneys that cause rejection not much.”
The CCP has long been accused of violating international regulations governing the transplant industry.
In April 2022, the American Journal of Transplantation conducted a large-scale computational text analysis of 2,838 transplant papers published in Chinese academic journals between 1980 and 2015, and found that Chinese transplant surgeons violated the internationally recognized “dead donor” rule , which removes the donor’s organs, including the heart and lungs, before they are (or may be) declared “brain dead.”
The website of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Committee of the U.S. Congress stated that the CCP has been widely accused of live organ harvesting, and the available information shows that Falun Gong practitioners are the main victims of this cruel practice, and Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities are imprisoned Also a victim. Since 2015, Chinese authorities have claimed to obtain organs only from voluntary donors, but the veracity of this claim has been questioned. Data show that Chinese hospitals perform many times more transplants than the highest estimated number of ethical transplant donors.
In March 2020, aindependent courtFinal verdict on the CCP’s live organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience. The court found that the practice of organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been practiced for a long time, involving a very large number of victims. On June 14, 2021, 12 executives of UN special procedures stated that they were “extremely appalled” by reports that Falun Gong practitioners, Uighurs, Tibetans and other ethnic minorities and Christians detained in China were “organ harvested” , and called on the Chinese government to “allow independent monitoring by international human rights mechanisms.”
In this context, harvesting organs from newborns raises suspicions that the CCP uses newborns as organ production machines.
Halpe was surprised that the American Journal of Transplantation accepted the paper from Shanghai Renji Hospital. He believes that journal editors should ask paper authors four questions, including: Did the baby’s parents have informed consent? Are the baby’s parents prisoners of conscience and vulnerable groups? Is there any congenital abnormality in the transplanted kidney?
The most important question is: Were the doctors aware of the existence and cross-matching of the 22 patients at least a month before the transplant?
“If they’ve done 22 (infant kidney transplants) and their article only mentions two, what happened to the other 20? Why did the paper mention only two?” Halpe said.
The first authors of the above-mentioned papers are Li Dawei and Wu Haoyu, attending physicians of the Urology Department of Renji Hospital, and the co-corresponding authors are Zhang Ming, deputy director of the Urology Department of Renji Hospital, and Bei Fei, director of the Neonatology Department of Shanghai Children’s Medical Center.
Responsible editor: Lian Shuhua#