An Open Letter to the President & Chair of the 27th International Congress of TTS by WOIPFG
This letter has been sent to TTS President & Congress Chair of the 27th International Congress of The Transplantation Society, and relevant organizations and professional individuals.
According to the TTS website, the 27th International Congress of The Transplantation Society will take place in Madrid, Spain, from June 30 to July 5, 2018. And we’ve learned that 39 doctors and medical personnel from the People’s Republic of China will participate in the conference, and among them, Dr. Haibo Wang[1] and Dr. Shusen Zheng[2] will deliver several important presentations.
I would like to remind you, on behalf of World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (hereafter referred to as “WOIPFG”), that there are sufficient evidence proving that Dr. Shusen Zheng has been illegally procuring organs for a long period of time. Many of these organs are very likely originated from some prisoners of conscience, who didn’t voluntarily donate their organs, and Falun Gong practitioners, who have been persecuted due to their faith, instead of from some executed prisoners, as previously claimed by the Chinese Communist regime. Furthermore, Dr. Shusen Zheng has allegedly violated the international community’s regulations on organ sources, and as a result, his medical papers have been retracted from an international medical journal and one TTS congress.
1. In August 2016, the 26th International Congress of The Transplantation Society was held in Hong Kong. On the press conference, Dr. Jeremy Chapman, a former president of TTS, said that a medical paper delivered at the Thursday meeting might have violated the rules of TTS that no organs from executed prisoners should be used in research. Dr. Chapman did not name the author of the paper, but The New York Times stated that “several people who attended identified him as Dr. Zheng, the transplant surgeon at Zhejiang University”.[3] Dr. Chapman said that TTS had told the Chinese government to investigate the matter and that TTS would also conduct its own investigation. If the suspicions proved true, Dr. Chapman said, “Then they will be named and shamed, and they will be excluded from our meetings forever — and from publication in transplantation journals.”[4] However, neither TTS nor the Chinese government later published their investigation results, and the case remains unsolved.
2. On January 30, 2017, clinical ethicist Wendy Rogers of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and her colleagues wrote a letter to the editor of Liver International, calling for the retraction of one of Zheng’s medical papers, which was published on this magazine’s website in October 2016, due to “absence of credible evidence of ethical sourcing of organs.”[5] Upon receiving the letter, the editor-in-chief of Liver International asked the paper’s co-authors, Shusen Zheng and Sheng Yan, for credible evidence on the organ sources. However, they hadn’t responded, when the deadline of February 3, 2017 passed. As the magazine’s editor was concerned that the paper’s “data on the safety of liver transplantation involved organs sourced from executed prisoners”, he decided to publish the study on a print issue, but with a retraction statement, and to implement a “life-long embargo” on the two authors from submitting their work to Liver International.[6]
A week after Liver International declared the retraction, Dr. Jiefu Huang, Chairman of the China Organ Donation and Transplantation Committee, said in an interview with The Paper, a Chinese state-owned digital news outlet, that his committee “supported the magazine’s decision, because Dr. Zheng’ s data are inconsistent with the facts”.[7] He also said in the interview, “From 2011 to 2014, there were 1,910 cases of (deceased) citizen liver donations in China”, which was quite different from what he said at the Vatican summit.[8] At the summit, he said that from 2011 to 2014, a total of 2,342 Chinese citizens had donated their livers after death.[9] If Dr. Zheng fabricated the data for his medical papers, how can he be trusted? If the Chinese officials can change the information they present from time to time, how can China’s transplantation industry be trusted?
3. While a practicing surgeon, Shusen Zheng is also the chairman of the Zhejiang branch of “China Anti-cult Association” (CACA). “China Anti-cult Association” and its local branches (such as its Zhejiang branch) were established by high-ranking Chinese Communist Party and government officials with religious, scientific or technological background and were guided by the “610 Office”, which is an illegal and secret task force of CCP for the purpose of persecuting Falun Gong. The sole purpose of all activities of CACA is such that: with the patronage of the government and state-sponsored media, members of CACA, in their capacity as religious leaders or experts on the various disciplines of science and technology, publicly justify the CCP’s persecution against Falun Gong to both domestic and international society, study and implement measures on persecuting Falun Gong for the Chinese regime and concoct anti-Falun Gong theories. Furthermore, CACA has directly taken part in persecuting Falun Gong practitioners, including the so-called “transforming” Falun Gong practitioners. After the establishment of the Zhejiang branch of CACA, Shusen Zheng has been serving as its deputy chairman and chairman of the Board of Directors since 2007. He actively organizes and participates in various meetings and training of personnel against Falun Gong, and presides over the editing of anti-Falun Gong monographs. He is an accomplice and executor of the CCP’s political and religious persecution.
Dr. Zheng has also been the chairman of China Organ Procurement Organization (OPO) since its establishment on November 23, 2014.[10] This organization has been the most important component of China’s state-run donation system, since the authorities declared the abolishment of the use of organs from executed prisoners for transplants on January 1, 2015. However, this organization’s chairman also happens to be an official under the supervision of the 610 Office, which is most notorious for its human rights violation. It can’t be coincident that the targets and victims of both organizations are members of Falun Gong religious group.
WOIPFG has a specific investigative report on Dr. Shusen Zheng: http://www.upholdjustice.org/node/397
TTS and you both enjoy a high reputation in the international medical community and the organ transplantation circles. I don’t believe that you would like to publicly cooperate with Dr. Shusen Zheng, who is mired with serious suspicions regarding his medical ethics, or to provide a platform for him. And you probably don’t want to have experiences cooperating with him, after the shady inside stories of the Communist regime’s organ transplant industry becomes fully exposed in the future, even if you were unaware of the truth.
WOIPFG would like to ask you and TTS to fulfill Dr. Chapman’s promise made on the press conference of the 26th International Congress of The Transplantation Society, by conducting an independent and verifiable investigation on Dr. Zheng’s suspected medical ethics violations and by announcing the investigation results. We also hope that, in view of Dr. Zheng’s medical paper retractions, you will cancel his attendance and qualification to give presentation at the upcoming congress.
Sincerely yours,
Dr. Zhiyuan Wang, M.D.
President, World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG)
P.O. Box 84, New York, NY 10116, U.S.A.
Tel: +1-518-869-2352; Fax: +1-347-402-1444
wang.zhiyuan@uphold-justice.org
_________________________________
Reference
[1] “Haibo Wang, People’s Republic of China”.
https://confman.tts2018.org/mobis/bio/24231
[2] “Shusen Zheng, People's Republic of China”.
https://confman.tts2018.org/mobis/bio/24250
[3] Tatlow, Didi Kirsten. “Chinese Claim That World Accepts Its Organ Transplant System Is Rebutted”. The New York Times. August 19, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/20/world/asia/china-hong-kong-organ-transplants.html?_ga=2.16283446.1019320983.1528256775-944752222.1486674552
[4] Tatlow, Didi Kirsten. “Chinese Claim That World Accepts Its Organ Transplant System Is Rebutted”. The New York Times. August 19, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/20/world/asia/china-hong-kong-organ-transplants.html?_ga=2.16283446.1019320983.1528256775-944752222.1486674552
[5] Chawla, Dalmeet Singh. “Study retraction reignites concern over China’s possible use of prisoner organs”. Science. February 6, 2017.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/study-retraction-reignites-concern-over-china-s-possible-use-prisoner-organs
[6] Chawla, Dalmeet Singh. “Study retraction reignites concern over China’s possible use of prisoner organs”. Science. February 6, 2017.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/study-retraction-reignites-concern-over-china-s-possible-use-prisoner-organs
[7] Wang, Yingying. “Jiefu Huang Talks About an Academician’s Medical Paper Being Retracted due to Organ Source Suspicions: Seeking Truth from the Facts and Promoting Transplantation According to the Law”. The Paper. February 12, 2017.
Archived webpage link: https://archive.is/QKQxf
[8] “Summit on Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism”. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences. February 7-8, 2017.
http://www.pas.va/content/accademia/en/events/2017/organ_trafficking.html
[9] Robertson, Matthew and Jacob Lavee. “China’s Organ Transplant Problem”. The Diplomat. March 29, 2017.
https://thediplomat.com/2017/03/chinas-organ-transplant-problem/
[10] Gao, Xiang, Zhou Xin, and Huang Ke. “China Organ Procurement Organization Announces its Establishment.” ScienceNet.cn. November 25, 2014. Archived webpage link: https://web.archive.org/web/20180608170212/
http://news.sciencenet.cn/htmlnews/2014/11/307975.shtm
