Who’s telling the truth about China’s bioethics?
by Michael Cook | 25 Jun 2016 |
Somebody must be telling porkies about the state of ethics in China’s medical profession.
In Nature this week the head of the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health Duanqing Pei and former Nature journalist Douglas Sipp claim that China’s reputation as a “wild east” of stem cell therapies is undeserved. They paint a picture of a disciplined and ethical scientific fraternity.
“ … all too often the intimation is that Chinese scientists are free to do anything and are a step away from making designer babies. What is more, commentators, both in China and outside it, often assume that scientists and others in China have little concern about the fate of early human embryos. Even a cursory review of China's existing regulations, as well as its research and social norms, shows that this picture is fundamentally inaccurate.”The authors say that China’s regulations are hidden behind a veil of ignorance due to the language barrier. But researchers operate with clear guidelines and firm regulation. “[I]n relation to the use of human embryos in research, China's approach has arguably been more effective and enabling than the legal patchwork seen in much of the world.”
On the other hand, doughty critics of China’s organ transplant industry accuse the government of "a new form of genocide that is using the most respected members of socieity to implement it". The International Coalition to End Organ Pillaging in China has released a 798-page report which claims that between 60,000 and 100,000 organs are being transplanted every year – far more than the official figures. What is the source? Falun Gong activists and their supporters in the West say that it is political prisoners and prisoners of conscience: Falun Gong members, Tibetans, Uighur separatists and house Christians.
“What we’re trying to do is get the government, the party state in Beijing, to stop killing their own people for their organs,” David Kilgour, a human-rights activist and former Canadian MP, told the Toronto Globe and Mail. “An industrial-scale crime against humanity is going on in China.”
The authors of the report, who have written extensively on China’s organ transplants in the past, are David Kilgour, David Matas and Ethan Gutmann.
Their claims face an obvious problem: they cannot be proved. Nearly all the evidence is based on inferences from statistics gathered from transplant centres. The Chinese government has angrily denied all of the allegations. It states that from 2015 the government stopped using death row prisoners as sources for organ donation and that organ donation is completely voluntary.
And Jeremy Chapman, an Australian transplant surgeon and former president of the Transplantation Society, describes the estimates in this new report “pure imagination piled upon political intent.” He says that the figures have been fabricated by the Falun Gong.
Here’s a video about the report
“What does Brexit mean for bioethics?” is our lead story today. Given that the Leavers were not expected to win and that the pundits have widely different views of the future of the politics and economies of the UK and the EU, it is unwise to be dogmatic on the issue.
However, the question highlights the importance of Britain in the world of bioethics. Britain is the home of utilitarianism, which is the dominant philosophy in bioethical discourse at the moment. The medical and scientific establishment is dominated by a utilitarian mindset which has set the agenda for debates on embryo research, stem cell research and assisted dying around the world. As one cynical writer commented, “when it comes to bioethics, Europe might be better off without Britain”.
There is something in this. Although I am handicapped by a big language barrier, my impression is that from Norway to Italy there is much more depth and diversity in bioethical discourse across the Channel. The Greens and the Christian Churches are much more influential, to say nothing of Continental philosophy, which despises utilitarianism as vacuous and naïve. If England (the pundits all agree that Scotland will secede) loses its biomedical industry to the EU, perhaps utilitarian bioethics will lose some of its funding and its influence. That would be no bad thing, I think.
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Sorry, guys, but BioEdge will be taking a holiday during July. Our next issue will be in the first week of August.
Michael Cook
Editor
BioEdge
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