Representative Neal Dunn (R-FL) has introduced legislation to prevent China's illegal organ harvesting from reaching the United States.
Named the Block Organ Transplant Purchases from China (or BLOCK) Act, Rep. Dunn's bill prohibits federal reimbursement of organ transplants and similar medical procedures when the origin of the organs cannot be verified.
Additionally, any organ transplant procedure not acquired from an entity participating in the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) will not receive federal reimbursement, thereby ensuring that the organs do not come from illegal Chinese markets.
As Brighter World explained, forced organ harvesting in China is a billion-dollar industry, with organs extracted from executed political prisoners such as Uyghurs, Falun Gong observers, and other ethnic and religious minorities.
"The Chinese Communist Party has a long track record of human rights violations stemming from illegal organ harvesting in their own country," said Rep. Dunn in his press release, adding, "Communist Party authorities regularly target Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in China for this barbaric practice. The United States must do everything in its power to ensure that we are not participating in illegal Chinese organ harvesting. The BLOCK Act is an important step toward ensuring that healthcare providers are not complicit in this atrocity and hold anyone who knowingly participates in this practice accountable."
Representative Gus Bilirakis (R-FL), one of the bill's cosponsors, said, "There is overwhelming evidence that China has systemically targeted ethnic and religious minorities for forcibly acquired organ donation and that the country regularly violates internationally accepted rules regarding organ donorship. We cannot remain silent in the face of these gross human rights violations and perpetuate the practice by offering a marketplace for the ill-gotten organs."
Dunn's bill follows another China-countering bill introduced last week, which prohibits federal funding of the Montreal Protocol's Multilateral Fund and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) until they remove China from the list of "developing countries."
