FIRM ADMITS LINK TO ORGAN SALES OF SLAIN CHINESE

by Edmund L. Andrews

The International Herald Tribune - The New York Times

Monday, March 9, 1998

A Germany company has announced that it is abandoning its halfinterest in a kidney dialysis center in Guangzhou, China, admitting that Chinese military officials had probably made it un unintentional accomplice in the selling of organs from executed prisoners to wealthy foreigners. Fresenius Medical Care AG, based in this suburb in Frankfurt, said its decision, announced Thursday, was prompted by a report by ABC News last fall. Fresenius, which acquired its stake in the Center from W.R. Grace & Co. in late 1996, said it had conducted its own investigation and discovered that foreign patients were receiving dialysis treatment at the center and may well have been "receiving kidney organs harvested from executed Chinese criminals". The announcement was made lass than two weeks after FBI agents arrested two Chinese officials in New York and charged them with trying to market human organs in the United States that came from executed political prisoners. The issue for Fresenius, and perhaps also W.R.Grace, stems

from a kidney dialysis center at a giant military hospital complex in Guangzhou, a short ride by water from Hong Kong. National Medical Care, subsidiary of W.R.Grace, started the center in a joint venture with the Chinese Hospital complex in 1994, and Fresenius bought the Grace subsidiary 18 months ago. The dialysis center was not directly involved with organ transplants. But the military complex operates a separate hospital for organ transplants on the same campus, and ABC News reported that the dialysis center served kidney patients while they waited for transplanted organs that were removed from prisoners as soon as they were executed.