A peer-reviewed study by Matthew P. Robertson and Jacob Lavee, “Execution by organ procurement: Breaching the dead donor rule in China,”
has appeared in the April 2022 American Journal of Transplantation.
“We find evidence in 71 of these reports, spread nationwide, that brain death could not have properly been declared. In these cases, the removal of the heart during organ procurement must have been the proximate cause of the donor’s death. Because these organ donors could only have been prisoners, our findings strongly suggest that physicians in the People’s Republic of China have participated in executions by organ removal.”
