Movement to Strip Honorary Professor of Title Due to Involvement in China’s System of Prisoner Donation
by Zachary Hendrickson
Posted on May 20, 2013
A campaign is mobilizing at the University of Sydney to have Dr. Huang Jiefu stripped of his honorary professorship. Dr. Huang spent twelve years as China’s Vice Minister of Health and is the man many hold responsible (for better or worse) for the expansion of China’s controversial system of organ donation. China currently relies almost exclusively on organ donations from executed Chinese prisoners. In fact, nearly 80% of all liver donations in China last year were acquired in this way. Such practices have drawn heavy criticism from medical professionals and international organizations, including the United Nations and the World Health Organization.
In a rare meeting with the press today Dr. Huang spoke out against his critics in support of prisoner organ donation in China. “We call it human value,” says Dr. Huang, “Everybody has a weak point and a strong point…You can say ‘he’s a bad man, he’s not on the good side…Then before he died he found consciousness and found he needed to do something to repay they society. So why you object?” Though he stands by the system of prison donation, Huang did say that he estimates the Chinese government will have moved away from prisoner donation entirely within the next two years. This does little to address those who take issue with the practice, however. Many believe that consent is not truly possible in a prison system, and some doctors have even spoken out about being forced to perform organ donation surgery while individuals lie dying on the ground.
It is most certainly a complicated issue. The medical world is largely split on Dr. Huang’s image. Some see him as a groundbreaking figure in the world of organ donations, someone who helped create China’s new public donation system, but others do not think so highly of Dr. Huang and his work. According to Professor Fiatorone Singh, one of the strongest voices against Dr. Huang at the University of Sydney, “I do believe that they are trying to move away from the system of using executed prisoners, but the real point is, if something is unethical, then you don’t suggest you are going to move away from it in a few years, you stop doing it now.”
by Stephen McDonell of ABC)
