Organs from prisoners on death row are still being used for transplants in China despite a pledge by a health official that the practice would end as of January 1 of this year, The New York Times reported, citing doctors and local media. Prisoners have been relabeled as citizens, enabling Chinese officials to include them in a new, purportedly voluntary “citizen donation” system Beijing is ostensibly building to reduce its longstanding reliance on prisoners for organs. “A majority of the lungs I transplanted last year came from convicts,” said Chen Jingyu, a national transplant specialist and a surgeon at Wuxi People’s Hospital.
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