Keywords: Villa kidney surgery・"Black hospital"・human organ trafficking, novel
An Extraordinary Case
Reported by Du Xiao of our newspaper and correspondents Jin Yi and Li Gang
Recently, the first prosecution office of the Haidian District People's Procuratorate in Beijing prosecuted Zheng and 15 others for organizing the sale of human organs.
According to reports, from all aspects, this case is one of the largest cases of suspected organization of human organ trafficking uncovered so far in China: it has been verified that 51 kidneys and over 10 million yuan in illicit funds are involved; from finding and supporting kidney sellers, contacting kidney buyers, to renting hospitals and villas for kidney surgeries, this criminal gang organized and led the entire process of selling human organs, its scale shocking.
From Intermediary to Organizing a Gang
The top suspect in this case, Zheng, male, born in 1969, with high school education, from Anhui Province.
According to Zheng's confession to the investigating authorities, he started engaging in intermediary activities for buying and selling kidneys at the end of 2007, mainly by first searching for uremic patients who needed kidney transplants (recipients) in hospitals, then posting information online seeking kidney sources. After finding suitable kidney sellers (donors), Zheng would arrange meetings between donors and recipients for compatibility testing. After that, Zheng no longer controlled how the surgery was conducted.
For each successful surgery introduction, Zheng could earn an intermediary fee of 5,000 to 10,000 yuan. From the end of 2007 to March 2008, Zheng introduced 30 to 40 kidney transplant surgeries, earning 200,000 to 300,000 yuan.
After March 2008, Zheng paused his illegal activities of introducing kidney transplant surgeries.
Starting from March 2010, Zheng began to build a larger-scale criminal gang to gain more illegal profits.
We learned that members of this gang included former kidney sellers who met Zheng through their own kidney sales and stayed to help him find more people willing to sell their kidneys; some were long-term residents in the urology departments of major hospitals, looking for uremic patients needing kidney transplants; some gang members rented houses in places like Xiaojiahe and Xibeiwang in Haidian District, where they supported donors found nationwide and confiscated their ID cards to prevent escape; some gang members were professional doctors and nurses responsible for performing kidney extraction surgeries on donors and providing post-surgery care.
Subsequently, during the nine-month-long crime of organizing kidney sales, Zheng gradually increased the price of each kidney sold to uremic patients needing kidney transplants, from 150,000 yuan up to 220,000 yuan or even higher.
Mutual Demand Between Supply and Demand
A typical kidney donor, Zhang, a 19-year-old young man, dropped out of high school and left home to work but still frequently asked his family for money. Initially, his family often provided for Zhang, but later stopped giving him daily expenses. In anger, Zhang told his family that if they didn't give him money, he would sell his kidney. His family didn't believe him, but Zhang actually searched online for information about becoming a donor and contacted a member of Zheng's gang via QQ group, agreeing to sell one of his kidneys for 25,000 yuan RMB, and immediately took a train from Inner Mongolia to Beijing. After getting off the train, Zhang was picked up by a man and taken to a rented house in Xiaojiahe, Haidian District.
According to Zhang's description, he was blindfolded and brought into a house where there were many other donors waiting for compatibility tests.
Prosecutor Bai Lei explained that blinding the donors was to prevent them from finding Zheng's gang's exact location afterward and demanding more funds.
Soon after, Zhang was taken to the hospital for systematic kidney compatibility testing and successfully matched with a uremic patient urgently needing a kidney transplant.
Wang, on the other hand, was a typical uremic patient who discovered his illness seven or eight years ago. Years of dialysis treatment failed to stop the deterioration of his condition. Later, upon a fellow patient's recommendation, Wang came to Beijing for treatment and learned at the hospital that he could buy a kidney for a transplant from a man named Zheng.
After contacting Zheng's gang members, Wang agreed to their offer and consented to purchase a kidney for 220,000 yuan. Subsequently, Wang submitted his compatibility details to Zheng's gang, and Zheng smoothly found a compatible donor among the over 20 donors he was supporting.
According to prosecutor Xiong Lu, in this case, over 50 people like Zhang underwent surgery under Zheng's arrangements due to economic pressure. Upon waking from anesthesia, they found one of their kidneys had been removed, not knowing where it went, receiving only rewards ranging from 20,000 to 25,000 yuan.
Regular Medical Staff Involved
Zheng, who had previously acted as an intermediary and gradually "got the hang of business," realized that simply introducing donors directly to recipients and letting them coordinate the surgery themselves resulted in low success rates and a maximum profit of 10,000 yuan per successful introduction. To make more money, he had to form a medical team dedicated to serving him.
According to Zheng's confession, during the Spring Festival of 2010, he met Doctor Zhou from a hospital in Xiao County, Anhui Province, through a friend. Zheng informed Zhou that the kidney trade was highly profitable, with a profit of three to four ten-thousand yuan per successful kidney transplant, promising to pay Zhou 25,000 yuan per kidney extraction surgery for various labor costs. Under Zheng's instructions, Zhou rented the operating room of a hospital in Tongshan County, Xuzhou City, Jiangsu Province, and recruited specialized surgeons Zhao and Yang for external surgery, and anesthesiologist Zhao. Among them, Yang was even the deputy director of a hospital's business department.
Bai Lei explained that initially, Zheng claimed to Dr. Zhao and Yang that he was a clerical staff member of a large hospital in Beijing, needing technical cooperation with Xuzhou to establish a dialysis center and perform kidney transplant surgeries.
Although Zhao and others felt that being a doctor from a small place, they wouldn't possibly be approached by a big hospital in Beijing for collaboration in terms of technology or credentials. However, faced with thousands of yuan per surgery, Zhao and others no longer questioned the frequent kidney extractions taking place in the operating rooms of township hospitals, simply doing surgeries as arranged by Zheng and collecting their fees after the surgeries.
Later, when the kidney extractions were moved to Beijing, Zhao and others, considering that doctors practicing medicine outside their province required invitation letters from foreign hospitals, even sought self-consolation by having Zheng issue them appointment letters under the name of a large hospital in Beijing, inviting them to perform surgeries in Beijing. Zheng complied with these doctors' requests and made extremely simple appointment letters himself, which Zhao and others knew were forged.
Subsequently, from March 2010 to June 2010, under Zheng's organization, Zhou, Zhao, and others performed surgeries in Huo Village Hospital in Tongshan County, extracting more than twenty live kidneys, which were transported to Beijing and sold to uremic patients needing kidney transplants. To facilitate kidney transportation, Zheng specifically purchased six boxes for transporting kidneys at a price of 690 yuan each from medical equipment suppliers.
Building a "Black Hospital" Inside Residential Neighborhoods
In June 2010, during the last transportation of kidneys from Huo Village Hospital to Beijing, Zheng's transport vehicle got into an accident, rendering the three kidneys on the vehicle unusable and causing significant vehicle damage. Considering the high risks of long-distance transportation and the unfavorable conditions for summer kidney transportation, Zheng began planning to establish a kidney extraction base in Beijing to facilitate timely delivery of extracted kidneys to relevant hospitals for recipient surgeries.
In September 2010, after long-term planning, Zheng rented a four-story villa in Yiheshan Zhuang, Haidian District, through a real estate agent at a monthly rent of 7,000 yuan, and according to the requirements of several doctors in the gang, gradually purchased all necessary medical instruments for kidney extraction surgeries from Xuzhou and other places, equipping them into this four-story villa located in a residential area.
According to the description of the prosecutors handling the case, there were no obvious signs inside or outside this four-story villa building, but internally, the first floor was used as doctors' dormitories and pharmacy, the second floor as a medication preparation room, ward, and nurses' dormitory, the third floor as an operating room and observation room, and the fourth floor as a dining and living area.
According to Fan, the head nurse responsible for nursing in the gang, when she first arrived at this "black hospital," "I saw that the nurses responsible for nursing did not have nurse uniforms, nor isolation gowns, and apart from us few from Xuzhou (referring to professional doctors coming to perform surgeries), there were no doctors there. The environment was dirty and messy, the equipment simple, and there were no certificates, licenses, or regulations. The necessary anesthesia and emergency drugs were only bought by Zheng according to my requirements after I arrived. That place was not a hospital at all, just a place for kidney extraction."
According to Xiong Lu, to ensure proper care for kidney donors after surgery and avoid serious consequences, Zheng specially sent his accomplice Zhi, working at a hospital in Xuzhou, to Beijing, residing in the "black hospital" in Yiheshan Zhuang, and specifically responsible for pre-surgery preparations and post-surgery recovery of donors; recruiting newly graduated nurses from health schools through online recruitment to handle surgery disinfection, delivering medical tools during surgery, and caring for donors' post-surgery recovery; hiring gang member Wang as a dedicated driver to transport donors to the villa and destroy medical waste produced during donor surgeries; even employing specific personnel to cook and clean for the entire "black hospital" including doctors, nurses, and donors.
We also learned that after the kidney extraction surgeries were transferred to Beijing, before each surgery, Zheng would notify Zhou to contact the doctors to come to Beijing in the morning, where his girlfriend Wang would pick them up from the station or airport and directly take them to Yiheshan Zhuang. They would remove three to six kidneys a day, and after the surgery was completed in the evening, Wang would drive the doctors back to the station or airport to leave Beijing.
Organ Donation System Needs Improvement
According to Bai Lei, the main suspect Zheng in this case had previously sought appropriate matching kidneys for relatives suffering from kidney disease, thereby discovering the huge market demand for human organ trading. Previously, the Haidian Procuratorate handled several cases of human organ trading, all with such characteristics: the criminals or those around them had prior experiences of seeking to buy or sell organs, thus becoming familiar with the entire process of human organ trading and subsequently embarking on a criminal path.
Data shows that currently, 1.5 million patients in China need organ transplants to save their lives every year, but the number of available organs for transplantation annually is less than one percent.
Vice Minister of Health Huang Jiefu recently revealed that organ donation pilots will be fully rolled out this year in hospitals with organ transplantation qualifications. Currently, the Ministry of Health has announced 163 hospitals with human organ transplantation qualifications, covering 31 provinces (regions, municipalities).
Industry insiders generally believe that without organ donations, there can be no organ transplantation. The scarcity of organ supply is mainly due to the extremely low rate of organ donations. In March 2010, the Chinese Red Cross Society and the Ministry of Health jointly launched a national pilot program for human organ donation. In 2011, the pilot program expanded to 16 provinces (regions, municipalities).
■Case Insight
From intermediary to forming a gang and building a "black hospital" for kidney extraction, the primary reason for the formation of the underground human organ trading system is the need for improvement in China's organ donation system, leading many patients urgently needing organs to seek transactions on the black market, objectively promoting the formation of the underground human organ trading system. Therefore, efforts should be made to improve the organ donation system.
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