China admits using organs from executed prisoners | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Finally. the Chinese admit what has been known for some time now--there has been a flourishing market in China in organs taken from executed prisoners:

"Apart from a small portion of traffic victims, most of the organs from cadavers are from executed prisoners," said Huang, reported the English-language China Daily newspaper Thursday. "The current organ donation shortfall can't meet demand." ... Americans are among the foreigners who have headed to China for transplants as the waiting time for kidneys and livers has grown in the United States. U.S. transplant doctors say the majority seem to be patients of Chinese ancestry who feel comfortable navigating the medical system there.

One was Mabel Wu, 69, of Northridge, Calif., who received a kidney in July at the Hemodialysis and Organ Transplantation Center of the Taiping People's Hospital in Dongguan, a city in Guangdong province...

The family paid about $40,000 for the surgery. They were told only that the donor was a 30-year-old male.

- Art Caplan