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March 1, 2012

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Big kidney-transplant network trial begins

MEDICAL professionals in east China's Jiangsu Province are among 16 people standing trial in Beijing, charged with engaging in the country's biggest human organ-trafficking case, the Haidian District People's Procuratorate said yesterday.

Prosecutors accused the gang of earning tens of millions of yuan by selling and transplanting 51 kidneys to recipients in Beijing between March and December of 2010.

Their leader, Zheng Wei, offered 25,000 yuan (US$3,975) to buy a kidney and the same amount to doctors for its removal surgery, but he would charge a buyer more than 200,000 yuan, the Procuratorate Daily reported yesterday.

It was a well-knitted underground group. The traffickers hunted for the donors, who were in serious need of money, accommodated them in rented houses and led them to get checks in hospitals to see whether their kidney was suitable for the clients, the report said.

Zheng's partner, Zhou Peng, a doctor in a county hospital in east China's Anhui Province, rented an operation room and lured surgeons and anesthesiologists from Tongshan County in neighboring Jiangsu Province to participate in the lucrative business, the report said.

Zheng falsely claimed he was an official with a Beijing hospital and planned to establish a kidney-transplant center.

Driven by big profits, the three doctors - Zhao Jian, Yang Guozhong and Zhao Hui - didn't question Zheng's claims despite the unusually frequent kidney-removal surgeries in the small county. Everyone was paid thousands of yuan from each operation, the report said.

The group removed more than 20 kidneys from April to June 2010, the report said. The illegal network moved its underground hospital to Beijing in September 2010 because it was more convenient to supply freshly removed kidneys to Beijing buyers. Zheng rented a four-floor villa in Haidian District and bought medical equipment worth 500,000 yuan.

"When I arrived here, it was so messy inside the house, without licenses, isolation gowns and drugs used in the emergency treatment," said a head nurse, Fan Haiyan. "It's a place for removing a kidney rather than a hospital."

Zheng's girlfriend, Wang Ying, would pick up surgeons and anesthesiologists from Tongshan County at the train station or the airport to do the operations. During a one-day stay in Beijing, the doctors could remove six kidneys, the report said.

The gang was arrested in Beijing's Fengtai District in December 2010, the report said.




 

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