Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Honourable members of Parliament, thank you for your invitation to come and speak today. It truly is an honour and a pleasure to be here. As the chair said, I am a member of an NGO called Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, which is an organization that consists of medical

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I would say that in my experience the ordinary Chinese person is somewhat suppressed by what is taking place with Falun Gong, because when I see Chinese people coming abroad to Canada or the U.S., sometimes if you simply talk with them or discuss with them the issue of organ harv

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  We do have a theory that within these prison camps there must be some categorizing of these people's blood types, tissue types, and they must have some type of data bank that makes it easily accessible. Whether that's happening regionally or locally, we do know that when medical

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Europe has not, but a very reasonable thing to do, at least, would be to have a medical advisory that patients travelling outside the country—

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  The answer is yes. The first thing they enacted was that no medical insurance within Israel could pay for any type of organ transplantation abroad. Then they put policies in place to make it illegal to travel for medical tourism, especially transplantation, to China. So the answe

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  There has been some effect. One is that a lot of it went underground. There were a lot of things that we had access to before the Kilgour/Matas report. They had an open public register that we could actually look at in Hong Kong. That closed after the Kilgour/Matas report. The in

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  There are thousands of tourists. I don't know the number of Canadians. I can say that there are over 100 from the U.S. a year. I know those numbers; I don't know Canadian numbers. But by far for America the number one place to go for organs is China, and it's increasing every yea

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Do you mean the demand to get organs? That demand is huge worldwide, and I don't think enacting laws is going to stop the demand. I do believe that it would stop Canadian citizens on a large scale from going over to China, but that demand we're looking at is going to be there for

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I can talk only from a medical perspective. Our goal has always been to have the international medical community make it very difficult for China. I'll give you an example. These Chinese transplant surgeons and the Chinese Medical Association are still members of the internatio

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  We believe it occurs in very small numbers. It's almost insignificant, when you look at the total number of transplants being performed every year, that those are taking place. Typically, if it's from the prisoner system, obviously they are executed and cremated. There are very f

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Just one further point here is that one of the big problems we have is that the international standard for transplantation means you should be open to scrutiny, which means the public should have the ability to go in and look at your transplant numbers, where they're coming from,

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I think it will be both. China's mean income is coming up, and the demand worldwide for organs is just going to increase over the next five to ten years. So in my opinion, the demand will go higher.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Actually, I was just saying that I know more about the medical community, but I think it needs to be double-effect. I know that in the U.S. a lot of medical doctors are working on a resolution, which is going through Congress right now and hopefully will be passed this year, that

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I think part of it is doing business as usual in China. What I mean by that is if a westerner goes to a hotel in China, they are paying approximately 50% more than the average Chinese person. It's standard business. But I think the other aspect of it is it's highly possible that

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I have just a quick comment. Economically it's been estimated that this industry is easily over one billion dollars a year. One person, if done well, could be worth close to $500,000 if you extracted multiple organs. But I think, going to Ethan's point, you had a perfect storm h