The World Must Know

• Youngster snatched while playing outside home in Linfen, Shanxi Province
• Parents found him three hours later screaming in a field covered in blood
• Kidnapper reportedly told boy: ‘Don’t cry and I won’t gouge out your eyes’
• Illicit trade fuelled because China has 300,000 on transplant waiting list

Organ traffickers gouged out the eyes of a six-year-old boy to sell on China’s transplant black market, it was claimed yesterday.

Police said the child, Binbin, was drugged after being kidnapped while playing outside his home.

His family found him covered in blood and crying in pain three to four hours later. His eyes were found nearby with the corneas missing, police say, implying that an organ trafficker was behind the attack.

The boy was rushed to hospital where doctors were shocked to find his eyes had been removed. His father said: ‘His eyelids were turned inside out, and his eyeballs were not there.’ 

Illegal organ harvesting is booming in China, where there is a shortage of donors, and last night, amid domestic and international outrage, Beijing was urged to crack down on the country’s multi-million-pound transplant industry.

Binbin was shown on state TV  being taken in bandages from an operating theatre to a hospital bed, writhing in agony as his shocked family wept.  China Central Television said he had been drugged and ‘lost consciousness’ before the attacker removed his eyes. 

His parents discovered he was missing when they called for him to come in around 8pm on Monday but received no response.

After a frantic search with relatives, they found him screaming in a field near their home in Fenxi, north China. The kidnapper had reportedly told Binbin: ‘Don’t cry and I won’t gouge out your eyes.’

China does not have a donor culture, but about 300,000 patients need transplants each year. Only about 10,000 receive organs, mainly taken from death-row prisoners.
Though the sale and transplant of organs for money is prohibited, lax laws and wide spread corruption have fuelled a booming industry.  China is also a leading destination for ‘transplant tourists’ who travel there to obtain organs.

Last night international doctors appalled by Binbin’s suffering called on leading medical journals to ban publication of Chinese research papers on organ transplants, to shame the country into tackling the problem.

Professor Arthur Caplan, head of medical ethics at New York University and spokesman for Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, said: ‘As unimaginable and untrue as this boy’s torment sounds, it shocks but does not surprise.

‘Whereas hearts, livers and kidneys must be sourced from donors who match the same blood and body type of recipient patients, in-demand corneas for corrective eyesight operations can be taken from any age and body type. ‘Anyone who knows where the corneas are located in the eye can extract them, and I fear for the unsterile conditions and the  barbaric methods used, and that infection may add to the boy’s suffering. ‘He will suffer unthinkable physical and psychological pain.’

Professor Caplan urged international governments to ‘stand up to China’ and take action to make it clean up its transplant industry. ‘Transplant tourists who travel to China with the right amount of money can order the organ needed,’ he said. ‘A prisoner is found to match the recipient and is taken out and shot.’

Last weekend, Chinese police detained members of a kidney- trafficking ring, including a team of four doctors and nurses.