“[AFN] has partnered with [DAFOH] because we share a united vision to protect and promote ethical, medical, and nursing practices worldwide,” AFN President Jennifer Johnson, who holds a doctorate in nursing practice, said at the Nurses Summit. “It is critical for all health care professionals to be aware of forced organ harvesting.”
Co-founder of AFN Kathleen Thimsen, who is an associate professor of nursing at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas and has a doctorate in nursing practice, served as the moderator of a panel of ten leading experts in nursing, forensics, ethics, human rights, law, and journalism.
The panel also included two witnesses from China, one of whom survived inhumane torture in a Chinese labor camp and the other who lost her father presumably due to forced organ harvesting.
A ‘Billion Dollar’ Industry
Collins-Perrica provided a comprehensive background for understanding forced organ harvesting, a human rights violation that obtains organs from living people without consent.“In China, the practice [of forced organ harvesting] is approved and sponsored by the government ... managed by the police and with military oversight.” Collins-Perrica said that with organ tourism, China’s organ transplant trade has become “one of the world’s most profitable” industries, generating a billion dollars a year for the regime.
Nurses Are ‘A Critical Linchpin’ of Medical Ethics
Ethan Gutmann, an investigative journalist who spent years traveling the world interviewing survivors of Chinese labor camps and prisons, writes extensively about China’s decades-long practice of forced organ harvesting.
“This was and is a human rights catastrophe. It was created by Beijing,” said Gutmann, “but it was continuously enabled by a handful of western surgeons who thought they could ride the Chinese dragon and come back home as if everything was okay.”
“Nursing is clearly the heart of western medical culture ... The live organ harvesting of political and religious dissidents goes against every aspect of [the nursing] oath and that code of ethics,” he said.
“By your presence here, by considering what I and so many other researchers have established, by considering collective action in any form, you become a critical linchpin.”
‘Major Issues in China’ With Ethics
Arthur Caplan, who holds a doctorate in the history and philosophy of science, is the Mitty Professor of Bioethics and founding head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York City. Prior to NYU, Caplan founded the Center for Bioethics and the Department of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania. He also served as a co-chair of a major United Nations and European Union task force on organ trafficking.
Caplan started his speech by defining the three pillars of the moral framework of organ transplant, namely the dead donor rule, altruistic donation, and fair distribution of the organs.
“Sad to say, I still believe that there are major issues” in China, Caplan said. “There is a huge gap between how many transplants China says it does every year and what they report for figures for organ donation.”
Caplan said that to get organs, the Chinese regime turns to its prisoners, who could range from political prisoners to Falun Gong practitioners, or those in a certain ethnic group—people who may be “inappropriately imprisoned.”
“I think nurses have a special obligation to be wary of what’s going on in China right now in transplants, still, to try and bring pressure on the government to improve and modify practices that especially involve prisoners, to try and also protest if information is put into journals ... that comes from China about transplantion, unless it is clear what the providence is of the organs that are being reported on,” he said.
‘Keeping Patients Fully Informed’
On the topic of ethics, Ecoee Rooney, president of the Louisiana State Nurses Association and the chair of the ethics committee of AFN, talked about the ethical considerations of organ procurement.
Rooney, who holds a doctorate in nursing practice, iterated the importance of keeping patients informed.
A Great Way to Educate Our Students
Rose Constantino, who holds a doctorate and a law degree, has been teaching at the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing since 1971, with rich experiences in ethical and legal issues in nursing practice. She talked about international organ trafficking and forced organ harvesting. She urges the scientific community to reject publications from countries with practices of organ trafficking and harvesting.
Global Legislative Campaign
Theresa Chu, a human rights lawyer based in Taiwan, talked about the Universal Declaration on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting (UDCPFOH), of which Chu serves as the chair of the steering committee. The UDCPFOH was jointly launched in 2021 by five NGOs, including DAFOH in the United States and others in Europe, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan.
The Universal Declaration urges the world to safeguard humankind’s inalienable rights, to maintain the highest values of justice, and to end one of the most egregious atrocities of this century: forced organ harvesting from living persons—without consent and for profit.
“We are currently promoting a Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting legislative campaign across Europe, America, and Asia to severely punish and prevent the atrocities of forced organ harvesting through the criminal laws of various countries,” said Chu, who has worked to defend Falun Gong victims for 20 years.
Through legislation, Taiwan has led the world in protecting its citizens from becoming complicit in the crime of forced organ harvesting. Since 2015, Taiwan has made it mandatory for patients going abroad for transplant to register the country, hospital, and doctor involved, or be stripped of insurance coverage for anti-rejection drugs. Taiwan also maintains a blacklist of mainland Chinese surgeons involved in organ harvesting to bar them from entering Taiwan.
Chu welcomes nursing professionals to sign the Declaration.
“[AFN] is committed to support the Universal Declaration,” said AFN president Johnson. “We know that forced organ harvesting is a human rights violation, and the elements at work are force, fraud, coercion, and even abduction.”
Debra Holbrook, president-elect of AFN and director of forensic nursing at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland, said, “The practice of forced organ harvesting is a form of human trafficking in its most egregious form, and we as forensic nurses have not only the responsibility, but also the obligation, to support all efforts to abolish these acts, no matter where they’re being performed.”
Holbrook said that she would like to challenge AFN to make a “task force of people—nurses, doctors, ethicists—who really want to address [forced organ harvesting] in the legal arena. And we bring our voices together, and we bring all the education that [DAFOH] has done in awareness.”
Personal Experiences Shared
Two Falun Gong practitioners from China also spoke about their experiences in Chinese labor camps and prisons, including about the torture, frequent blood tests, and medical exams targeting practitioners. The father of one of the practitioners died in prison due to the persecution. She talked about how her family was not allowed to have a full examination of her father’s body and how they had suspected that his organs were harvested.A Road Map of Actions
The summit concluded after a Q&A session, where questions related to forced organ harvesting were discussed. “The summit gave us a road map of actions we can now take, especially in the areas of education and law,” Collins-Perrica told The Epoch Times. “This is the first time nurses and doctors have publicly collaborated on the issue of forced organ harvesting. We have a unified vision to see it promptly end, and we look forward to working together.”After attending the summit, a nurse from Virginia wrote, “The Nurse Summit to CPFOH [Combatting and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting] was very good, the speakers were great. Seeing the survivors of persecution in China speak really made this personal for me.”
Another audience member wrote, “thank you to all the speakers for bringing awareness to the crimes of FOH. We appreciate your courage and perseverance.”
