The People’s Republic of China’s new system for acquiring organs—and the man behind it, former Vice Minister of Health Huang Jiefu—has been lauded in some circles as a decisive break from the use of executed prisoners as organ sources. But critics regard the new arrangements as implicitly coercive, and argue that the lack of transparency allows organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience and others to continue.  (The Epoch Times)

An eight-year old British girl of Indian descent was allegedly murdered by health care workers in India so they could harvest her organs, her grieving parents claim. (International Business Times)

Nine women have registered with Japan’s first “ovum bank” to donate their eggs to help infertile women, paving the way for fertility treatment to begin within the year at the earliest, a private group said Monday. (The Japan Times)

A woman who was the first to have a successful womb transplant from a dead donor has had her pregnancy terminated after the embryo showed no heart beat, doctors in Turkey said on Tuesday. (Fox News)

When the doctor showed up at his hospital bed and told Kyle Wilkerson that she had good news, that she had a heart for the Maryland teenager, Kyle had a suspicion. Mom Denise Wilkerson says her 15-year-old son looked up at the cardiologist and asked, “Is it Skylar’s heart?” (ABC News)

A prestigious Australian university has come under scrutiny recently for giving an honorary professorship to a former top Chinese health official who has been involved in unethical organ harvesting.  (The Epoch Times)

Using plastic fibers and human cells, doctors have built and implanted a windpipe in a 2 ½-year-old girl — the youngest person ever to receive a bioengineered organ. (New York Times)

An EU-led court in Kosovo on Monday jailed five doctors for organ trafficking at a Pristina clinic in the first such case in the breakaway territory which has already faced allegations of similar crimes during and after its 1998-99 war. (AFP)

Should people be allowed to sell their organs? That question lingers in Tales from the Organ Trade , a documentary by Toronto’s multiple award-winning filmmaker Ric Bienstock, making its North American premiere at Hot Docs , April 28, 29 and May 2. (The Toronto Star)

Less than two weeks after Lens magazine in mainland China blew the whistle on the torture taking place in China’s Masanjia Labor Camp, another magazine from the same company has revealed the existence of a nationwide network involved in trading organs. This more recent article hints at an even larger story yet unreported by mainland China’s media involving atrocities committed by the regime. (The Epoch Times)

Now prosecutor Jonathan Ratel awaits a verdict as early as next week in a trial that featured sometimes chilling testimony from more than 80 witnesses — including a crucial eyewitness account from a Toronto man who paid for a kidney in what the court heard was a vast and illegal trade in human body parts. (The Toronto Star)

Tales from the Organ Trade is a fascinating film which takes a chilling look at the characters in the international black market in organs. (BioEdge)

U.S. scientists built functional replacement kidneys — artificial kidneys — on the structure of donor rat organs from which living cells were stripped. (UPI)

The first woman to have a successful womb transplant from a dead donor is pregnant, a hospital in southern Turkey said. (Reuters)

The study is a first-of-its-kind, single-institution comparison of outcomes for both pediatric and adult patients undergoing liver transplantation for lethal genetic syndromes. Researchers found that children with genetic disorders that cause fibrosis, cirrhosis, and other liver conditions, which can affect other organs, have a good chance of still being alive five years, even 20 years after a liver transplant operation. Adults with these types of conditions also have high survival rates. (Medical Xpress)

A former top Kosovo health ministry official on trial for organ trafficking on Friday admitted that illegal kidney transplants were carried out at a Pristina clinic, but denied covering them up. (AFP)

“I think the transplant community worldwide needs to wake up and pay attention and begin to put pressure on China for these issues” Christopher Hughes, M.D., Surgical Director of Liver Transplantation, at the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute (The Epoch Times)

The Australian Senate unanimously passed a motion on March 21 urging the government to oppose the practice of organ harvesting in China. (The Epoch Times)

A European Union prosecutor has filed more charges against seven Kosovars on trial over an illegal kidney trafficking scheme, while alleging that the key suspects consulted with top government officials on plans to perform the transplants. (Huffington Post)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene have confirmed that a patient who recently died of rabies in Maryland contracted the infection through organ transplantation done more than a year ago. The patient was one of four people who had received an organ from the same donor. (Centers for Disease Control)

Maharashtra’s cadaver donation count - which stood at an abysmal 355 organs in the past 15 years - made impressive strides last year. As per the latest report of the state heath department, as many as 381 kidney transplants and 21 liver transplants took place in the state in just about nine months, between April 2012 and December 2012. (Times of India)