Chinese doctors are said to have conducted organ procurement among prisoners sentenced to death in violation of transplant ethics, as they allegedly cut out hearts and lungs before brain death, according to a study from the Australian National University. The researchers assume that the violations have been taking place for over 30 years.
The authors, ANU PhD researcher Matthew Robertson and Israeli cardiac transplant surgeon Jacob Lavee, analyzed 2,838 papers drawn from a dataset of 124,770 Chinese-language transplant publications. They said that the certified causes of death do not match the medical procedures listed in medical reports from 56 Chinese hospitals.
The main criterion of brain death is a patient’s inability to breathe without a ventilator, and Chinese transplant surgeons were said to declare brain death before this criterion was confirmed by intubation.
“We define as problematic any BDD [brain death declaration] in which the report states that the donor was intubated after the declaration of brain death, and/or the donor was intubated immediately before organ procurement, as part of the procurement operation, or the donor was ventilated by face mask only,” the study says.
In 71 of the BDD cases analyzed by researchers, the dead donor rule was “almost certainly” violated, according to the study, as the surgery “precluded a legitimate determination of brain death.”
“In the cases where a face mask was used instead of intubation — or a rapid tracheotomy was followed immediately by intubation, or where intubation took place after sternal incision as surgeons examined the beating heart — the lack of prior determination of brain death is even more apparent,” according to the study.
The researchers concluded that prisoners died from the surgeries and not from execution.
Meanwhile, medical regulators in Finland allowed organ transplant surgeries on deceased donors without an official declaration of brain death, declaring legal donation after circulatory arrest. In some cases, donors with serious brain injuries no longer have a chance to recover, but brain death does not occur.