The Chinese military is deeply involved in China's lucrative organ trade, according to an authoritative report on illegal organ harvesting which has just been released.
The report by former Canadian Secretary of State David Kilgour and international human rights lawyer David Matas, says the People's Liberation Army (PLA) in China co-ordinates the transplant of organs from Chinese prisoners to foreign recipients using military hospital facilities and personnel.
The report's authors say the Chinese military is a law unto itself and is not bound by recent Ministry of Health initiatives that were designed to appease international concern over organ harvesting claims.
The latest report is an update of a comprehensive study released last year.
"The involvement of the People's Liberation Army in these transplants is widespread," Mr Kilgour told a press conference earlier this month.
Despite blanket denials from Communist Party officials, the authors say the practice continues in China unabated.
Since the release last July of their initial report, titled Report into allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China , the two authors have travelled to over 30 countries, raising awareness of the atrocities and gathering further evidence.
The new report, titled Bloody Harvest , is 20 pages longer and cites 16 additional areas of information. The authors say it presents an "even more compelling case for our conclusion".
The new report paints a grisly picture.
When China moved from a socialist to a market economy in the 1980's, health and military institutions suffered enormous cutbacks in funding, the report explains. Since then individual hospitals and military facilities have been forced to seek other ways to supplement their budget.
With a ready supply of organs from persecuted Falun Gong practitioners and a growing demand for organs from foreigners, both turned to organ transplants as a way of making money.
The report's findings confirm earlier reports of the PLA's involvement in the organ transplant trade.
In 2001, London's Daily Telegraph reported that all transplant operations on foreigners in China were being carried out in military hospitals as waiting lists were too long at Ministry of Health facilities.
Military hospitals were independent of the health ministry, and had better access to the Public Security Bureau (the police) the report said, and that meant better availability of transplants that were a good "fit".
The Canadians' earlier report claims 41,500 unexplained organ transplants were conducted in China from 2000 to 2005 − the six year period since the persecution of the spiritual practice of Falun Gong began in 1999.
In the more recent report, the authors make the point that while corruption is rife in China, the sale of organs by the military is not a corruption problem. The vilification and persecution of Falun Gong and the requirement for military personnel to make money are both State sanctioned.
Organ harvesting in China, they say, is mostly a "money driven problem" and merely follows the principles (or lack thereof) of the Chinese Communist Party. Prices taken from Chinese transplant websites last year were costing liver transplants at around US$120,000 and a kidney at around US$80,000. As the former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping said "to get rich is glorious" and without moral or ethical foundations, how one gets rich appears not to matter, the report states.
Included in the recent report are additional recorded phone conversations with Chinese hospitals and interviews with foreigners who had organ transplants in China. While donor recipients' experiences varied, all acknowledged unrelenting secrecy, and a determined lack of information about procedure, timing, doctors and their support staff.
"When people act as if there is something to hide it is reasonable to conclude there is something to hide," the report said.
The authors have included more stringent recommendations to halt what they describe as "a disgusting form of evil". They have specifically requested that pharmaceutical companies stop selling anti-immune drugs to China and called on all foreign countries to ban the export of such drugs.
Chinese transplant professionals are known to use large amounts of anti-rejection drugs as Chinese transplant hospitals provide no after care and do not tissue match, as in the West.
Anti-immune drugs may cover other deeper complications and have many side effects − some of them life threatening. According to transplant professionals, aftercare from transplants gained in this way, may be a lifetime concern.
In Australia, all transplant procedures are covered by Medicare, the burden of aftercare accordingly falling on the States' public health system.
David Matas said citizens who get commercial organ transplants abroad should not get reimbursed or get aftercare funding.
A full copy of the new report is available at organharvestinvestigation.net .