Tennessee Unanimously Passes Bill to End Complicity in CCP’s Forced Organ Harvesting Abuses

The bill, now going to the governor’s desk, aims to ban health insurance coverage on transplant operation and care linked to China.

Falun Gong practitioners act out a scene of stealing human organs to sell during a demonstration in Taipei on July 20, 2014. Mandy Cheng/AFP/Getty Images

Tennessee lawmakers unanimously approved a bill to prevent the state from facilitating forced organ harvesting abuses by China’s ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The Tennessee Genomic Security and End Organ Harvesting Act, sponsored by eight legislators in the state House and three in the Senate, passed in both chambers with votes of 90-0 and 27-0 respectively. It is now headed to Gov. Bill Lee’s (R) desk.

The bill addresses two separate issues that have caused concern around the world: the Chinese state’s access to mass collections of genetic data, and the human rights atrocity of state-sponsored harvesting of vital organs from prisoners of conscience.

The new law would ban Tennessee health insurers from knowingly providing coverage for transplants and post-transplant care for operations performed in China, or involving organs that come from China through either sale or donation. The legislation would also authorize the state’s health commissioner to apply the policy to other countries that facilitate or sponsor such abuses.

The measure also bans medical or research facilities from using genetic sequencers, or operational or research software, if the devices originate from a foreign adversary nation or a company that could come under the adversary state’s control. The targeted countries include mainland China and Hong Kong, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Russia. Institutes would need to remove and replace non-compliant devices within 180 days after the law comes into effect.

Lawmakers also intend to restrict storage of genetic sequencing data through the act, which would ban remote access to data storage that isn’t public from outside the United States without written approval from the state health commissioner.

The measure allows the state’s attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti, to investigate any potential violations. Facilities face a fine of $10,000 each time they use a banned device to analyze genetic sequencing data or knowingly store American-sourced genetic sequencing data in a foreign country. A health insurance provider that willfully breaches the law faces fines of $100,000 for each infraction.

From an entity found guilty of violating the bill, a patient could seek at least $5,000 in statutory damages for “each unique use of the person’s genomic information.”

State Sen. Adam Lowe in a March 10 floor session said he’s worried that the CCP could use Americans’ genetic material for “anything from biowarfare to … matching a black market organ transfer.”

U.S. lawmakers in recent years have pointed to mass genetic data collection from Chinese military-linked company BGI (Beijing Genomics Institute Group), saying such activities pose a security risk. The United States has put BGI’s units on trade blacklists, saying its technology has helped to repress minorities in China.

The bill passed through the Tennessee Senate on March 17.

Days earlier, several members of the U.S. Congress unveiled the Block Organ Transplant Purchases from China Act. The bill, sponsored by Reps. Neal Dunn (R-Fla.), Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.), and Chairman of the House Select Committee on the CCP John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), would stop federal reimbursement for transplant surgeries and related medical services that use an organ from potentially illicit sources.

Dunn said the United States “must do everything in its power” to ensure it’s not participating in the human rights abuse, and described the legislation as an important step toward accountability.

Early this month, lawmakers reintroduced the Falun Gong Protection Act to impose sanctions on the Chinese regime over its forced organ harvesting atrocities, a major target of which is practitioners of the persecuted faith group Falun Gong—a self-cultivation practice based around the moral tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance.