Organs trafficking

'Barbaric': Human organs harvested from Chinese prisoners prompts outrage, call for retraction of 400 scientific papers

A group of researchers is calling for the retraction of more than 400 scientific papers after a first-of-its-kind study that claims countless human organs were unethically harvested from prisoners in China.

The study, which was published in the journal BMJ Open and led by Australian researchers, highlights a facet of scientific ethics that does not receive a lot of attention. Namely, that many English-language academic journals do not follow international ethics rules over donor consent for organ transplants.

“There’s no real pressure from research leaders on China to be more transparent,” Wendy Rogers, a professor of clinical ethics at Macquarie University and the study’s author, told the Guardian. “Everyone seems to say, ‘It’s not our job.’ The world’s silence on this barbaric issue must stop.”