Talk:Organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China

anyone want to substantiate 'live' claim?

All the items below are from non-Chinese reporters and the well-known xenophobia press. Why nobody living in China know about it? Literally there is almost no FLG practitioners nowadays in China mainland. Does it mean that the organ transplantation has been severely impacted if this assertion (organ harvesting from FLG practitioners in China) is true? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sleeperlee (talk • contribs) 03:49, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

i am broadly familiar with the flg harvest issue, though more familiar with the transplant industry in general. and i know that it is fairly well established that in china they use the live harvest strategy to ensure freshness, which has come out through the jiang yanyong interview, and the uyghur interviews which are open and explicit about it. but is there the same highly substantive witness testimony for live harvesting of flg group?Happy monsoon day 18:33, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

from Falun Gong prisoners targeted for organs: report http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2008/s2332875.htm "David Matas: Basically they wait until there's an order from the hospital, they will blood test the person, and then they inject the person with potassium, and then they put them into a van and the actual organ extraction is in the van, where the prisoner is killed through the organ extraction and then the body is cremated."

and China’s long history of harvesting organs from living political foes http://nypost.com/2014/08/09/chinas-long-history-of-harvesting-organs-from-living-political-prisoners/

Quotation without attribution

The second sentence of the article currently reads:

According to the reports, political prisoners, mainly Falun Gong practitioners, are being executed "on demand" in order to provide organs to recipients.

If we're going to put "on demand" in quotation marks, shouldn't we cite the specific source from which we are quoting?

The WaPo article's contradiction with established scholarly findings, thus undue to include in lead

Hi Bangalamania,

Your recent addition of the Washington Post source has caught my eye. I really appreciate your interest into human rights, but the article's claims appear to directly contradict the findings of well-established scholarship, notably, those of the China Tribunal (2019-2020).

The WaPo source claimed that forced organ harvesting had already ended and that it had been reformed by PRC official Huang Jiefu. This claim is in direct contradiction with the tribunal’s findings, which explicitly said that the practice was still happening. In addition, Huang Jiefu himself was identified by the tribunal as a potential agent of persecution in the regime’s crackdown against Falun Gong.

The tribunal is also chaired by British barrister Sir Geoffrey Nice QC as well as other prominent lawyers and profs. To further demonstrate the credibility of the tribunal, I’ve also compiled some reports by established media outlets on the tribunal’s judgement.

By Reuters: China is harvesting organs from Falun Gong members, finds expert panel

By The Guardian: China is harvesting organs from detainees, tribunal concludes

By NBC: China forcefully harvests organs from detainees, tribunal concludes

So, I think the Wapo article is WP:UNDUE to include in the lead, as it contradicts established findings. Please let me know what you think. Thanks! Thomas Meng (talk) 05:02, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Hey Thomas Meng; I appreciate that I am not an expert in the subject area, so I am willing to defer on this issue. However, the way the lead was written before my changes I think implied that it is only the Chinese government which opposes the claims laid out in the report; as you say, the WaPo article, which is not affiliated to the CCP, contradicts this, and is mentioned in the article. I personally think this is relevant to mention in the lead so as not to give the wrong impression. – Bangalamania (talk) 13:43, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

@Bangalamania: Okay thanks. Now I understand your point. But looking at the WaPo article, it appears that it gave significant weight and validity to PRC official Huang Jiefu’s statements of reform, which were disputed by the tribunal’s judgement.

Also, I think to assume validity in lawyer Liang Xiaojun’s argument (which the WaPo cited) in the lead that he had “never heard of” organ harvesting taking place is very undue, given that it has also become quite clear to the contrary after the tribunal ruled.

Since the WaPo and others’ claims in its article (another of which simply said that organ harvesting was “unthinkable” to have happened in China) are not based on nearly as much research as the 500-page tribunal judgement, I would suggest replacing it with the latter, which has yet to be mentioned in the lead. This way we don’t create a WP:FALSEBALANCE. Thomas Meng (talk) 05:00, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

The China Tribunal has close ties to and was essentially established by Falun Gong itself, and should not be viewed as a neutral, independent source. As the WaPo article explains, Falun Gong's allegations of organ harvesting are viewed as highly dubious, and there's no direct evidence for them. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:46, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Discussion concerning recent edits

Hi RuleTheWiki, you mentioned me in your recent edit and removed quite a bit of information. While CowHouse made a partial reversion, they left the rest of your edit untouched. Let’s sort the issues out here.

You said that I was violating NPOV by removing the “reports of” before “organ harvesting”. Perhaps I need to back my edit with some sources. Also, the “reports of” was present when this article was first created in 2015, but a lot more evidence has since surfaced and many governments have passed resolutions condemning organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience.

From the scientific community, Professor Wendy Rogers at Macquarie University, who in 2019 was recognized as one of Nature's 10 and won the Australian government’s NHMRC Ethics Award for her investigation into forced organ harvesting, said:

China is still performing a large number of transplants […] and that vast [quantities of] organs are sourced from prisoners of conscience. […] A lot of those prisoners are Falun Gong practitioners.

From the governments' side: In 2016, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution, where the House—

Calls on the Government of the People’s Republic of China and Communist Party of China to immediately end the practice of organ harvesting from all prisoners of conscience;
demands an immediate end to the 17-year persecution of the Falun Gong spiritual practice by the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Communist Party of China, and the immediate release of all Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience [...]

The China Tribunal in London, which is paneled by renowned experts such as Queen's Counsel Geoffrey Nice and Professor Martin Elliott (surgeon) at University College London, ruled in 2020 that

Forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale and that Falun Gong practitioners have been one – and probably the main – source of organ supply. The concerted persecution and medical testing of the Uyghurs is more recent and it may be that evidence of forced organ harvesting of this group may emerge in due course.

Since the government states it as a fact and condemns it, and prominent scientists and legal experts also have no doubt that it is true, it is fair for us omit the "reports of". Thomas Meng (talk) 05:00, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

@Thomas Meng:It is not fair to omit 'reports of' because:

a) Prof Wendy Rogers is a primary source, not secondary, we need secondary sources that contextualise her statements

b) A resolution of the US House of Representatives is not fair evidence in that it is a political body

c) The China Tribunal was setup by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China, whose regional managers include several photographers/contributors for The Epoch Times, hardly unbiased

I would like to highlight that you said 'since the government states it as a fact and condemns it' is a criteria by which you are evaluating truthfulness then statements of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs are to be treated as such as well no?

I would also like to mention that a slew of other respected experts has concluded that there is no forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong members in China like Benjamin Penny, an expert of religious and spiritual movements in China and a professor at the Australian National University. This is a person far more qualified to speak on these matters than a bioethicist. - || RuleTheWiki || (talk) 04:26, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

The fact of the matter is that peer reviewed academic sources report that there is extensive, credible evidence of forced organ harvesting in China. It's not clear to me what the purpose of removing the case study was, since it was well-sourced and was on-topic. I plan to revert to the pre-mass removal stable version while this discussion is ongoing. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 02:08, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

@Mikehawk10 The references you have cited are from executed Chinese prisoners not the 'live' organ harvesting from Falun Gong alleged in the article. The WaPo article sums this up perfectly in that whilst China has and might still harvest organs from executed prisoners, they do not specifically harvest organs from live Falun Gong prisoners and no independent reporting has ever substantiated these rumours. - || RuleTheWiki || (talk) 17:53, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

@RuleTheWiki:While some of the sources do indeed say that China is using organs from prisoners, there is a lot more to unpack regarding prisoners of conscience:

• The peer-reviewed source published in 2019 by the BMJ notes that in China there have been extensive and credible reports of non-voluntary organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, adding to ethical concern, citing reports on Chinese organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners. The source itself is a review article, analyzing multiple research articles.
• The peer-reviewed source published in a 2018 issue of Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal (GSP) clearly states that Falun Gong practitioners have been exposed to a wide range of torture methods, including brainwashing, forced labour, sleep deprivation, sexual violence, psychiatric and other medical experimentation, and forced organ harvesting. The same source also notes that in June 2016, David Kilgour, Ethan Gutmann and David Matas released a detailed update of their previous work on organ transplant activities in China. ... The update confirmed that forced organ harvesting continues in China on an industrial scale, despite announcements by Chinese officials that China has stopped using prisoners for organ transplantation. The source, which was published in 2018, also notes that [f]orced organ harvesting is directed by the Chinese State/Communist Party machinery.
• The academic source from the journal World Affairs was published in 2012. The source notes evidence of forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners prior to 2007, writing that from 2000 to 2007, approximately sixty-five thousand Falun Gong went under the knife. The source also comments specifically on whether organs were taken from live individuals, writing that Were the operations... performed while the donor was still alive? Given the timing and the emphasis on preventing rejection by the new hosts, the likely answer is yes.
• The peer-reviewed source from Robertson et al. that published by BMC Medical Ethics in 2019 casts doubt upon current Chinese official transplantation statistics, writing that A variety of evidence points to what the authors believe can only be plausibly explained by systematic falsification and manipulation of official organ transplant datasets in China. Some apparently nonvoluntary donors also appear to be misclassified as voluntary. This takes place alongside genuine voluntary organ transplant activity, which is often incentivized by large cash payments. These findings are relevant for international interactions with China’s organ transplantation system. The source also notes that [t]he goal of these elaborate efforts appears to have been to create a misleading impression to the international transplantation community about the successes of China’s voluntary organ donation reform, and to neutralize the criticism of activists who allege that crimes against humanity have been committed in the acquisition of organs for transplant.
• The peer-reviewed source from Allison et al. that was published by BMC Medical Ethics in 2015 notes that Since 2006, mounting evidence suggests that prisoners of conscience are killed for their organs in China with the brutally persecuted Buddhist practice, Falun Gong, among others, being the primary target. In addition, it notes that [o]rgans from executed prisoners are still being used for transplantation in China. The likely differences after January 2015 are that written consents are obtained and these organs are now classified as voluntary donations from citizens, accepted notwithstanding the fundamentally coercive context and that [t]he semantic switch may whitewash sourcing from both death-row prisoners and prisoners of conscience.

While The Washington Post is a generally reliable WP:NEWSORG, WP:SOURCETYPES reminds us that [w]hen available, academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources. When there are multiple high-quality academic sources that describe organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners has continued (especially those published after the WaPo article), it would be best practice to cite and use the academic sources for facts rather than a newspaper article that is contradicted by multiple peer-reviewed academic works. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 20:59, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

@Mikehawk10: You're trying to put a highly controversial claim into Wikivoice. As the Washington Post article makes clear, the claim of organ harvesting of Falun Gong prisoners is viewed as extremely dubious by experts in the field. Wikipedia cannot make a declarative statement that these accusations are true unless it's clear that the vast majority of sources view the claims as unambiguously true. That's clearly not the case here.

Recently, I've noticed a disturbing pattern in these sorts of China-related articles for a sort of campaigning style of editing, in which highly dubious, controversial claims are put into Wikivoice. It seems that editing in this topic area is getting so highly political that basic policies like WP:V are being completely ignored. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:56, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: the ping didn't go through because that is no longer my username. The edits made reflected the discussion above, which took place about a year ago. The high quality sources above show no doubt around the credibility of the reports of Organ Harvesting. The single article from WaPo is simply outdated, as has been previously established on this talk page. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 22:23, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

That hasn't been established on this talk page. An editor claimed that the China Tribunal renders the WaPo article irrelevant. However, given the close links between the China Tribunal and Falun Gong, this reasoning doesn't hold. The claims of organ harvesting remain extremely controversial and dubious. If Wikipedia's policies on verifiability and neutrality have any meaning, these claims cannot be put into Wikivoice. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:30, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

And as for the five academic sources I noted above? Any comments? — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 04:30, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

If you're going to challenge only the sources that Thomas Meng noted, so be it, but at the very least would you be willing to explain why you are rejecting the unambiguous peer-reviewed sourcing above? — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 13:38, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

It's not unambiguous at all. As you're aware (for example, from the Washington Post article), experts are highly skeptical of the claims of organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners (for a number of reasons, including the paucity of evidence to back up the allegations). Citing a few sources that you agree with and ignoring those that disagree is cherry-picking. You know that these are extremely controversial allegations, and putting them in Wikivoice shows a disturbing disregard for WP:NPOV. -Thucydides411 (talk) 13:18, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Thucydides, the relevant WP:SCHOLARSHIP here is extremely clear about the topic. Hinging the entire objection to this on a single out-of-date news report brings to mind the part of WP:NEWSORG that even the most reputable reporting sometimes contains errors. When there's an academic consensus for something, and that consensus is clear, we run afoul of WP:NPOV by giving a single erroneous report equal weight with academic consensus. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 20:42, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

I find it astonishing that you're claiming the existence of organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners is an established academic consensus, and that it's only "a single erroneous report" that disputes the idea. Many (it may even be most) experts consider the claim of organ harvesting highly dubious, and there is ample documentation of this fact. This Australian Broadcasting Corporation article interviews various experts, and they are divided on the issue. The article acknowledges that there is "widespread scepticism towards the report" by Matas claiming organ harvesting, and describes that report as "controversial". The Australian government published an inquiry into the question, which came down skeptically on the claims of organ harvesting. This article in The Australian interviews various experts with conflicting opinions. One passage, to give you an idea:

Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade remains sceptical about the allegations of forced organ harvesting. Testifying in the parliamentary hearing, DFAT’s first assistant secretary, North Asia division, Graham Fletcher, said China was gradually building a voluntary organ donation scheme and had banned organ tourism in 2009. With regards to Falun Gong and claims of systematic organ harvesting, he said: “We don’t believe there is credible evidence of that activity occurring.”

It is clear that the allegations of organ harvesting are highly controversial, and are disputed by many experts. This is because of:

1. The lack of hard evidence provided to back up the claims. The main piece of claimed evidence is a controversial, high estimate of the number of organ transplants done on China.
2. Countervailing evidence, such as the lack of imports into China of immunosuppressants that would be necessary to carry out so many transplants.

Again, I'm astonished that you're trying to present these highly controversial, dubious claims as settled facts in Wikivoice. Doing so would be a massive breach of WP:NPOV. -Thucydides411 (talk) 05:45, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

There is quite a bit of doubt on that Washington Post article, plus skepticism regarding Huang Jiefu's statement that China doesn't harvest organs anymore, so it should not go in the lead. [1][2][3] FobTown (talk) 16:05, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

This issue is no longer controversial as evidence has mounted recently. Here are some recent developments in government bodies and medical journals:

• In June 2021, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) released a statement expressing a dozen UN Special Rapporteurs being extremely alarmed on this issue. They said that

  Forced organ harvesting in China appears to be targeting specific ethnic, linguistic or religious minorities held in detention, often without being explained the reasons for arrest or given arrest warrants, at different locations [...] We are deeply concerned by reports of discriminatory treatment of the prisoners or detainees based on their ethnicity and religion or belief.

• On April 4, 2022, the top peer-reviewed journal in this area, The American Journal of Transplantation, published an article named Execution by organ procurement: Breaching the dead donor rule in China that affirmed the academic findings in journals cited by Mhawk10. This publication is also covered by many media entities and its authors invited to a recent US Congressional hearing to testify. It says

  We find evidence in 71 of these [Chinese-language transplant publications], 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.

• After many MEPs called for action from the EU, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on May 5, 2022 that

  Expresses its serious concerns about the reports of persistent, systematic, inhumane and state‑sanctioned organ harvesting from prisoners in the People’s Republic of China, and, more specifically, from Falun Gong practitioners and other minorities such as Uyghurs, Tibetans and Christians; [...] insists that the EU and its Member States publicly condemn organ transplant abuses in China

  [4]
• In addition to the unanimously passed US House of Representatives resolution (cited above) condemning forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners, many U.S. state legislatures followed suit. Here are links to the resolutions passed by the
• Texas House and Senate [5] (also signed by the Texas governor)
• Virginia General Assembly [6]
• Illinois State House [7]
• Maine State Senate [8]
• Arkansas State House and Senate [9]
• Georgia State House [10]

Note that all of these developments happened after the the Washington Post article. And, given that almost every single one of the resolutions were unanimously passed, and that academic findings in respected journals all suggest it is occuring in China, we can say that there is both governmental and academic consensus on this issue. Thomas Meng (talk) 19:56, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Resolutions by political bodies, such as the Georgia State House or a group of MEPs, don't have any bearing at all on the truth or falsity of the allegations.

The article you linked to notes that the identities of the donors it's discussing are unclear (whether they are prisoners, let alone Falun Gong prisoners, is unknown). It argues that these donations are probably from prisoners, but qualifies that this is not based on any specific evidence. The paper is specifically about patients whom Chinese doctors considered braindead, but who the paper argues were incorrectly identified as braindead. Even if one accepts the rather speculative claims in this article, this is a far cry from the claims that Falun Gong prisoners are being executed on demand for organs.

As I've detailed above, the claims of organ harvesting are viewed skeptically by experts. There's no hard evidence of organ harvesting, let alone the even more specific claims of organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners. These claims cannot be put in Wikivoice. -Thucydides411 (talk) 12:25, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Washington Post again, etc

{u|Thucydides411}}, I think that the edits you've just done contradict what appears to be the consensus here, that we can say this happened in Wikivoice and that the WaPo article shouldn't go in the lede. I can't read the WaPo article, which is paywalled, so any chance you could quote the relevant bit - from the glimpse I got it looked like it claimed to "undercut" rather than refute the allegations, and that the harvesting had happened in the past. I also don't understand why mountains of reporting that this occurred needs to be framed as "allegations" while the single report suggesting it might not is framed as "shown". That's not NPOV is it? BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:14, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

@Bobfrombrockley: Sorry for not responding easier. I didn't get a ping from the above message.

I don't see mountains of reporting that this has happened. There have been scattered claims that it has happened, and also push-back by experts on the organ trade and others. The problem is that there has never been any direct evidence for the claims - the argumentation is all indirect.

I was honestly quite shocked when I looked at this page, after not having looked for a while, and saw that it had been transformed into a set of declarative statements that organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners had definitely happened, and that contrary reporting had been removed.

I don't see the rationale for removing the Washington Post article, which appears to be the most in-depth mainstream newspaper report on the subject. However, I agree that "undercut" (which the article itself uses) would be better than "refute". To briefly summarize some of the main points in the Washington Post article:

• Chinese demand for immunosuppressants is roughly in line with the number of transplants China claims to carry out. Transplants cannot be carried out without these drugs. An expert interviewed by the Washington Post says it is "unthinkable" that China is clandestinely using substantially more of these drugs than is known.
• The head of the WHO's transplant program disputes claims by proponents of the organ harvesting theory that China is a major transplant tourism destination.
• Other experts say that it is 'not plausible' that China could be doing many times more transplants than, for instance, the United States, where about 24,000 transplants take place every year, without that information leaking out as it did when China used condemned prisoners’ organs. (Note that the issue of death row prisoners' organs previously being used for transplants in China are separate from the claims about Falun Gong.)
• And lawyers who have defended Falun Gong practitioners also reject allegations that those prisoners’ organs are being harvested. The lawyers, who have defended hundreds of Falun Gong members, point out that China does not execute people for being members of Falun Gong, and say that they have only heard of a few deaths in prison.
• Other experts the Washington Post spoke to say that if there were thousands of executions of Falun Gong prisoners a year, that would be impossible to hide.
• The Washington Post says that Gutmann's claims about the number of Falun Gong prisoners in China is orders of magnitude higher than even the highest estimates by other groups, including by the US State Department.

Essentially, experts are extremely skeptical of the claims of organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners, for myriad reasons, and there's never been any direct evidence to back up the claims. We can't start putting these highly controversial claims in Wikivoice, as if we knew them to be true. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:35, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: Please self-revert to the stable version pending further discussion. We cannot act as if a single article from WaPo, which is now somewhat dated, is the be-all-end-all of all future information relating to the organ harvesting, especially in light of the multiple academic studies and peer-reviewed papers that have come out about this and were noted on this page as early as May of last year. If you'd like more recent sources than last year, I would point you to yet another peer-reviewed publication that affirms the existence of organ trafficking from executed Falun Gong practitioners, saying:

China has historically by far and the away the largest amount of systematized trafficking of organs of any country because of its practice of transplanting organs from executed prisoners. These include prisoners of conscience, most of whom are comprised of Falun Gong practitioners

. Your erroneous claim that experts are extremely skeptical of the claims of organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners is frankly unsupported by the relevant WP:SCHOLARSHIP. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 21:15, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

The version that you want me to revert to makes declarative statements that are heavily contested by experts on the subject, including experts in organ transplants, experts in the trade of immunosuppressant drugs required for transplants, and human rights lawyers who have defended hundreds of Falun Gong members in court. You can't just sweep all of this aside, because you've cherry picked a few articles that disagree with these experts. Like it or not, these claims are heavily contested by numerous experts, and I honestly can't believe that you want to put them into Wikivoice. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:17, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

I will revert the article to the stable version pending further discussion then. With due respect, there are a plethora of peer-reviewed reliable sources noted in this thread, while you're relying on a single newspaper article from 2017 here. If there is serious scholarship that contests the well-documented organ harvesting, please provide it rather than making sweeping generalizations of what experts declare. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 04:48, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Organ harvesting from Falun Gong is not "well-documented". In fact, it's widely recognized, even by proponents of the claims, that there is no direct evidence at all that supports them. The claims are based almost exclusively on estimates of how many organ transplants China might be carrying out, given the number of hospitals capable of carrying out transplants and claimed waiting times. Then, the logical leap is made that the extra organs are being taken from Falun Gong prisoners. Experts contest every aspect of these claims. Experts in the international organ transplant industry say that China is not a major destination for organ transplants. Experts from the pharmaceutical industry say that China doesn't import enough immunosuppressant drugs to carry out the volume of transplants claimed by the organ harvesting theory. Lawyers who defend Falun Gong members say that Falun Gong prisoners are not executed. Outside estimates of the number of Falun Gong prisoners are orders of magnitude lower than the numbers claimed by proponents of the organ harvesting theory. Other experts say it would be impossible for China to hide an operation of this scale without detailed, concrete evidence leaking out (for example, from families speaking out). Yet no such evidence has ever emerged, and no one can point to any victims of this supposed massive operation.

You've specifically removed reporting that details these numerous problems with the organ harvesting theory, and instead are cherry picking a small number of sources that you agree with. This is not neutral editing. -Thucydides411 (talk) 11:24, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

To be frank, the fact that a single 2017 report from the Washington Post exists does not give it promenece in the lead, especially when there's a plethora of reliable scholarship on the topic. The whole "counterarguments" section, frankly, appears to be providing WP:UNDUE weight to a single stale news report when academic and peer-reviewed publications, which WP:SOURCETYPES notes that are usually the most reliable sources, appear to frankly contradict it, while WP:NEWSORG notes that [s]cholarly sources and high-quality non-scholarly sources are generally better than news reports for academic topics and whether a specific news story is reliable for a fact or statement should be examined on a case-by-case basis. Frankly, we are giving too much weight to the sole Washington Post source in the current article in light of its relative reliability, as WP:NPOV commands us to cover the topic in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources. And, frankly, the widespread scholarship (including review articles!) that confirms the existence of organ harvesting is so prominent that denial of the existence of organ harvesting borders on WP:FRINGE territory at this point. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 18:36, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

@Red-tailed hawk: I’d suggest gutting the “counter arguments” section entirely and dispersing the content that’s there to other, more appropriate parts of the article. By way of example the section contains the views of Huang Jiefu when it should go under the “Chinese government response” section since he’s a health official. Creating a whole section based on just one news article gives the corresponding topic a veneer of legitimacy that isn’t warranted. Stormandfury (talk) 10:04, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

First of all, there's a very important distinction that has to be made between two different issues:

• Past use of organs from death row prisoners who had been executed. The fact that this happened until 2015 in China is not contested, and there is concern that it still sporadically occurs (e.g., when death row inmates formally agree to donate their organs).

• Organ harvesting from members of Falun Gong. The accusation here is very different from the above issue. The accusation is that China is running a massive organ harvesting operation specifically targeting Falun Gong believers, and that tens of thousands of people are being executed on demand each year in order to take their organs.

Most of the academic sources above discuss the first issue, and the views expressed by these sources differ as to the extent to which China has cleaned up its organ donation system since 2015. There does seem to be broad agreement that there has been significant reform in China, but there are still concerns that death row inmates are being pressured to "voluntarily" sign up as organ donors.

It takes a giant leap to go from concerns about whether China has completely reformed its organ donation system to claims that China is executing tens of thousands of Falun Gong believers on demand for their organs each year. Yet I see editors making exactly this same conflation over and over again. At times, academic sources that express concern about the first issue are used to justify making the second claim in Wikivoice - again, this is an inappropriate conflation of two different issues.

A second point I'd like to make is that statements by international experts on organ donation cannot simply be dismissed, because they are quoted in news sources. The Washington Post, the Associated Press and other news agencies have specifically sought out expert opinions on this subject, and have accurately described the fact that there is widespread skepticism among these experts toward the claims of organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners. This alone makes it completely inappropriate for us to proclaim, in Wikivoice, that all these experts are wrong, because we have identified one or two journal articles that take a differing opinion.

In response to the complaint has been made that the Washington Post article is supposedly alone in casting doubt on the claims of Falun Gong organ harvesting, here are a few more such sources:

• The Australian, 2018: This article describes the report by Matas and Kilgour as "controversial": In 2006, a controversial Canadian report brought the world's attention for the first time to a horrific allegation: that the Chinese Government was secretly harvesting organs of Falun Gong followers. It describes "widespread skepticism" of the claims in the report: Acknowledging widespread scepticism towards the report, one of the authors of the original report, David Matas, a prominent human rights lawyer, told the ABC that "there is new evidence every day". The article then quotes an expert who is skeptical of the claims: But Benjamin Penny, an expert of religious and spiritual movements in China and a professor at Australian National University, told the ABC that he does not think organ harvesting is an ongoing practice. Penny (who studies Falun Gong) says that he has not seen any evidence proving or disproving the claims, and that evidence is difficult to come by. The article also cites Wendy Rogers, who believes that the claims are "credible" (which is different from saying that they are proven).

• The Australian, 2018: This article quotes various Australian experts who are skeptical of the claims of Falun Gong organ harvesting. First, a statement from an Australian government agency tasked with looking into the issue that there's "no credible evidence" for the claims: Opinions vary on the Falun Gong claims, and Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade remains sceptical about the allegations of forced organ harvesting. Testifying in the parliamentary hearing, DFAT’s first assistant secretary, North Asia division, Graham Fletcher, said China was gradually building a voluntary organ donation scheme and had banned organ tourism in 2009. With regards to Falun Gong and claims of systematic organ harvesting, he said: “We don’t believe there is credible evidence of that activity occurring.” Next, the views of an Australian academic who has studied organ donation and organ trafficking: Contacted for comment, Fraser says he also doubts that forced organ harvesting continues in any systematic way in China — an opinion that has brought him into conflict with supporters of Falun Gong. As the article describes, most of the concerns are not about systematic organ harvesting from Falun Gong (an accusation that many experts, as I think it's clear, find outlandish), but rather that China still sporadically transplants organs from people on death row who sign up as organ donors (where the implication is that this is not truly voluntary, and provides a state incentive for capital punishment): China banned the use of executed prisoners’ organs in 2015 and has apparently set up a nationwide voluntary donation system instead. But there are fears the practice continues, if only sporadically, with prisoners reclassified as voluntary donors to get around the rules. These realistic concerns are very different from the claims of systematic organ harvesting from Falun Gong. This article also describes disagreement between Rogers (previously mentioned) and Fraser over whether Falun Gong witness accounts are credible. While Rogers considers them "obviously authentic", Fraser says the witnesses’ testimony was not credible and in fact sounded rehearsed.

• Associated Press, 2017: This article leads off with, The World Health Organization says China has taken steps to end its once-widespread practice of harvesting organs from executed prisoners but that it’s impossible to know what is happening across the entire country. The head of the WHO's transplantation program, Jose Ramon Nuñez Peña, expresses his view that China has reformed its organ donation system, but that it's impossible to know what could be happening everywhere in the country. Peña's view is based on his inspections of transplant centers throughout China. Campbell (previously mentioned) also gives his assessment that organ transplant tourism to China has fallen off: Campbell Fraser, an organ trafficking researcher at Griffith University in Australia, agreed the trends over the past few years have shown a drop in the number of foreigners going to China for transplants and an increase of organ seekers heading to the Middle East.

• This is all in addition to the Washington Post article, which explains the many reasons that experts from different fields (organ donation, the pharmaceutical industry, lawyers who defend Falun Gong members, experts on human rights in China) stongly doubt or even outright dismiss Falun Gong's claims. Just to give an example: lawyers who have defended hundreds of Falun Gong members say that they are not even aware of any cases of people being executed for membership in Falun Gong in the first place. Or another example: organ donation requires immunosuppressants, and China simply does not use enough of these drugs to do the number of transplants that are claimed by the organ harvesting theory.

Now, I would like to move on to academic sources, since the claim has been made by some editors that academic sources are all in agreement that Falun Gong organ harvesting is occurring.

The American Journal of Transplantation invited two different academics to give opposing views on the issue. The first view, by Trey et al., argued that there had to be stronger verification that use of organs from death row prisoners had ceased (note that this is not the same as the Falun Gong organ harvesting claims, as I pointed out at the top of this edit). The journal also invited a response, by O'Connell, Ascher and Delmonico. This response is worth quoting at length, because it completely contradicts the claims made by some editors here that there is an academic consensus that the Falun Gong organ harvesting claims are true.

O'Connell et al. are from The Transplantation Society (TTS). Their first point is that the TTS has been central in reforming organ donation systems globally:

The Transplantation Society (TTS) was the first professional transplantation organization to respond to the practice of using organs from executed prisoners for transplantation more than a decade ago. TTS has been instrumental in working with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Health Assembly to develop guidelines for governments to combat organ trafficking and, with the International Society of Nephrology, established the Declaration of Istanbul (DOI).

They call the claims of Falun Gong organ harvesting "unproven assertions" that have been "published in AJT without validation":

TTS has been asked by the American Journal of Transplantation (AJT) to comment on the personal opinion piece by Trey et al in this issue of the AJT. The authors wrote that the Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) are perpetuating an unproven claim of 100 000 transplantations per year in China, derived from the murder of unnamed followers of the Falun Gong. The call by DAFOH for a complete moratorium against interactions with Chinese transplant specialists is exactly counter to the needs of the Chinese community today. DAFOH is “giving oxygen” to the opponents of change in China by targeting those who are trying to bring about reform. Transparency of transplantation practice is a WHO guiding principle that should apply not only to China but also to every other country in the world. When the unproven assertions of DAFOH are published in AJT without validation, they serve the interest of those within China who would thwart change and transparency.

They then discuss the "consensus of the WHO and international transplant professionals" about reform in China:

The results of our strategies have been a decade of change in China that led to the 2015 declaration that Chinese transplant centers would no longer use organs from executed prisoners. The consensus of the WHO and international transplant professionals who have visited China in the past 2 years is that those tasked with the oversight of organ donation and transplantation within China are bringing about reform that is consistent with the WHO guiding principles and the DOI.

The following article in the journal Medicine reviews the reform of the organ donation system in China, and paints a completely different picture from the Falun Gong organ harvesting theory. In "Cadaveric organ donation in China", Wu et al. (2018) describe progress and remaining problems in the Chinese organ donation system:

In this paper, we will discuss several ethical issues concerning cadaveric organ donation from the perspective of sociocultural factors that are unique to China under the condition that China has ended the use of executed prisoner's organs for transplants. It is found that though great developments have been made in organ transplantation, the ethical issues relating to organ transplantation still face dilemmas in China.

They discuss the phase-out of the use of organs from death row prisoners, and discuss the views of international experts on the reforms:

Since then, several of the world's foremost transplant professionals, who had ever called for the international transplant community to boycott China's unethical organ procurement, have had increasingly positive attitudes towards the transplantation system reform in China.[8–10] On August 22, 2015, the National Organ Procurement Organization and Forum on International Organ Donation was held in Guangzhou. A good number of international transplant professionals, including the former President of the Transplant Society, Francis Delmonico, the incumbent President, Philip O’Connell, and Director of Organ Transplantation of World Health Organization (WHO), Jose R. Nuñez, attended the meeting. Before the meeting, these International Transplant Professionals visited a number of China's transplant centers. After conducting field observations, they concluded that China had made great achievements in organ transplants, and that high praise should be given to the reform of China's organ donation and transplantation system.

I don't think it's possible to review this literature and then come to the conclusion that there's some sort of consensus that China is executing tens of thousands of Falun Gong prisoners on demand each year in order to take their organs. The idea that we would put this claim in Wikivoice is just completely crazy to me, and the fact that we're discussing this possibility at all indicates to me that we have some very serious problems with POV editing and WP:ADVOCACY in China-related topics. -Thucydides411 (talk) 12:38, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Wu et al. was primarily written by Chinese academics, that means its no good for controversial topics. Note that it would have been illegal for them to draw any other conclusion, they would have been thrown in prison. But sure "high praise" all around. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:03, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

You're proposing a racist sourcing criterion. This is a peer-reviewed paper published in a major American scientific journal. We're not going to exclude sources because you object to the nationalities of the authors. -Thucydides411 (talk) 09:16, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: I think Horse Eye's Back is using "Chinese" to refer to people living in mainland China rather than Chinese people. I think that a blanket ban on sourcing from the latter (i.e. a ban based on race/ethnicity) would clearly be racist and would fly in the face of Wikipedia policy and common sense and should never be adopted. The former, on the other hand, only appears to hinge on the notion that a source being produced within a country with strict censorship laws is something that would plausibly reflect editorial independence and reliability. And that Chinese censorship laws affect reliability for certain topics is something that the community has repeatedly considered as a legitimate consideration. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 03:14, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

@Red-tailed hawk: If one wants to be more precise, one can call it "bigotry." When a scientist publishes an article in an established academic journal with peer review, it is absolutely unacceptable to rule the article out based on the nationality of the author. You can argue (without any evidence) that you think the authors were coerced and that they don't believe what they're writing. I can argue that the authors actually know what they're talking about because they have direct experience in China, and that you just don't like what they're saying because it goes against your POV. But all of this is irrelevant - this is a peer-reviewed journal article by an expert. If there's any more talk of excluding sources based on the nationality of the authors, I think we have a behavioral problem that must be addressed at the appropriate fora. -Thucydides411 (talk) 07:55, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: Again, this isn't with respect to nationality; there are many Chinese nationals who are living in areas like Hong Kong and Macau that are not subject to the same sort of censorship regime as the mainland, while there are people who are not Chinese nationals that work for universities located in Mainland China. I agree that it is not acceptable to rule out a source based upon the country in which their author holds their citizenship, and I don't think Horse Eye's Back is suggesting that Chinese nationals living abroad in regions that don't suffer from strict censorship regimes should have their writings discarded as reliable simply on the basis of their national origin (discarding sources on the basis of the author's national origin would, to quote my previous response, fly in the face of Wikipedia policy and common sense). Rather than having arguments built around national origin or ethnicity, I think Horse Eye is making a judgement based upon the fact that all of the co-authors are subject to strict censorship laws. As you point out, the fact of the matter is that a robust source analysis shouldn't end there; that this is peer-reviewed and published in a journal in a territory not subject to those same strict censorship laws are credible reasons to argue that the source's editorial independence is not impeded by those same censorship laws. But I don't think there's a need to WP:ABF here and claim that Horse Eye is motivated by something other than their sincere belief that strict censorship laws would affect reliability of works related to this topic (i.e. it would have been illegal for them to draw any other conclusion, they would have been thrown in prison) when in this context use of "Chinese" in "Chinese academics" appears to clearly be an adjective relating to the territory in which the academics work rather than a sweeping generalization related to national origin and/or ethnicity/race. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 14:15, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Nothing racial about it unless one is a Han supremecists. I assume you are not such a supremecist and do not exclude non-Han groups from the concept of Chinese in the context of citizenship of the PRC? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:20, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Excluding peer-reviewed scientific articles published in established journals because the authors are Chinese, live in China, etc. is bigoted. This entire conversation is a non-starter. It is not acceptable to look up the nationality or country of residence of scientists who publish in respected peer-reviewed journals and decide on that basis whether or not to cite them - that is not part of a robust source analysis. As for the little bit about "Han supremacy" above, Horse Eye's Back is now arguing that it's impossible to be racist against Chinese people, because "Chinese" isn't a race. This is pretty disturbing stuff to hear from a long-time Wikipedia editor who edits heavily in China-related topics. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:41, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

That is not at all what I said... You're over the line WP:NPA wise and need to get back on topic. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:44, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Do you... believe we should totally ignore a country's censorship laws when assessing a source's reliability and the corresponding weight that we should give a source? — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 22:02, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Do you think you know better than the editors of major scientific journals, and that based on your personal judgment as a random Wikipedia editor, you're going to overrule those professional journal editors and declare that Chinese people are blanket unreliable? -Thucydides411 (talk) 06:39, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Can you maybe use a less ambiguous term than Chinese people? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:57, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Where in this discussion have I declared that Chinese people are blanket unreliable? Can you point me to it? If not, would you please strike the comment?— Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 15:59, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

So this tag is present because of a single user? That seems like a thin reason to keep it around. Adoring nanny (talk) 16:48, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

The basic problem raised here has still not been addressed: this article makes claims of fact that are, in reality, heavily contested by experts. I'm concerned by the excuses being made for ignoring reliable sources, including the argument made above that we can ignore reliable sources if we deem their nationality to render them untrustworthy. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:44, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Exactly. The "sources" it cites are actually newspaper articles reporting on the Epoch Times claims, not the practice itself. Conveniently, the parts of those newspaper stories that call the claims into question are ignored.

This article is using those newspapers as a middleman to make The Epoch Times a valid Wikipedia source. This is an extremely irresponsible article to keep up on Wikipedia. Yoyofsho16 (talk) 18:59, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Can you be more specific (ie. point out specific places where we're citing a source to report claims it attributes to the Epoch Times, without reporting things in that source that express or cover skepticism of those claims?) Misuse of a source is a serious issue, but we ought to focus on and correct specific instances one at a time. --Aquillion (talk) 07:52, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

References

The Neutrality hatnote should be removed

And I’m doing so. Because
- I’ve looked through every Talk thread here and can’t see anything relating directly to the hatnote.
- There is no mention of non-neutrality anywhere in the Talk page.
- There is sourcing for every statement made in the article.
It is clear to me that the conditions which must be satisfied for its removal have indeed been satisfied. Boscaswell talk 21:13, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

The discussion of article neutrality (namely, the lack thereof) is in the above section, "Discussion concerning recent edits". The issues raised in that section have not been resolved, so I am restoring the POV notice. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:46, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

It was resolved, just not to your satisfaction. Time to move on and accept consensus Thucy. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:18, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't see how it was resolved. I presented a series of reliable sources that dispute the existence of organ harvesting. You responded that some of the authors are Chinese, and should therefore be discounted. I don't accept the nationality of the author as a criterion for rejecting a reliable source. If you want to argue for that criterion, which would entail a major change in Wikipedia's sourcing standards, then you'll have to take it to one of the large fora, there the community can decide whether "the author is Chinese" (to paraphrase) is a valid argument for excluding peer-reviewed literature published in reputable international journals. We can't institute such a drastic revision of sourcing policy on an out-of-the-way article talk page. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:44, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

This is absolutely not "consensus," and if you take five minutes to scan any of this article's sources it would become immediately apparent.

Almost every single source cites The Epoch Times as the only source of these claims, and even calls them into question because of it! The article conveniently ignores that last part, essentially using the newspaper articles as a middleman between Epoch and Wikipedia to make it a valid source.

This isn't just a biased article: there's suggestion that it's a completely non-existant phenomenon. This is a lazy and troubling response. Yoyofsho16 (talk) 18:55, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

I definitely think there are issues with the article's current sourcing and weight (see the section below.) Just from a quick look:

• We have an eye-watering 18 citations, without attribution and often as the sole source for WP:EXCEPTIONAL claims, to the Kilgour–Matas report via http://organharvestinvestigation.net/ (see below), plus several other cites to it in various other ways.
• In the "Evidence" section, the entire intro paragraph makes numerous exceptional claims without attribution, yet is cited to two book reviews and what appears to be an opinion piece from the National Review, a yellow-quality source noted for its partisan coverage on WP:RSP and which specifically requires attribution.
• We cite Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, an extremely obviously WP:BIASED source that clearly requires attribution whenever it is cited, multiple times without attribution.
• We cite www.falunhr.org, the The Falun Gong Human Rights Working Group, another obviously WP:BIASED source, multiple times without attribution.

Many of these are probably correctable, but we do have to actually correct them - attribute when necessary; avoid excessively lopsided citations to WP:BIASED sources, replace bad or weak sources with better ones and update the text to what the better sources say, and so on. --Aquillion (talk) 08:35, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Excessive reliance on the Kilgour–Matas report

We cite the Kilgour–Matas report via https://organharvestinvestigation.net/ an eyebrow-raising 18 times (plus more via other formulations), with no attribution, which would be enough to raise WP:DUE issues for even the absolute highest-quality sources; and most of the things we are citing it for are plainly WP:EXCEPTIONAL, which likewise requires the highest quality of sourcing. On top of that, several of the most exceptional things we cite to it are cited solely to that source, with no secondary coverage. Looking at its website, though, I'm not sure it's an WP:RS at all - it's an independent report with no indication of peer review, editorial controls, or fact-checking. They're hawking book version of it on that site, but they're published by Seraphim Editions, which appears to have virtually no reputation - publishing that book seems to be the only noteworthy thing about it. Secondary coverage might allow us to cite it with attribution via that coverage, but using it so excessively as the sole source for exceptional claims seems alarming. I believe we should avoid citing it unattributed, reduce citations to it outside of the section devoted to it, and try to trim usages of it down to places where we can find at least some secondary coverage, especially for anything potentially controversial or exceptional - one report shouldn't be given the level of weight we're giving it right now. (Also, glancing at our article on Kilgour–Matas report, the sources there are also exceptionally low-quality in places.) EDIT: This source was previously discussed at RSP, though back in 2009, and the consensus was clearly that it should not be cited unattributed. I'd also definitely hold that 18+ citations for a source that can't be used unattributed is extremely excessive. If it has a bunch of secondary coverage, we should be citing it via that (which also, of course, means using the framing, perspective, and analysis in the secondary source.) --Aquillion (talk) 08:17, 7 April 2023 (UTC)