The Honourable David Kilgour, former Canadian Secretary of State for the Asia Pacific Region arrived in Australia last week. In Melbourne on Thursday, Mr. Kilgour is speaking at a pre-release private screening of the film “Free China: The Courage to Believe”. This film, in which Mr. Kilgour is interviewed, tells the story of two Falun Gong practitioners who survive the horrors of China’s labor camps, including torture and human organ trafficking. (New Tang Dynasty TV)

Few women voluntarily go through the invasive and time-consuming procedure without compensation, leading to a shortage of healthy oocytes, commonly called eggs, for research. (Sacramento Bee)

Selling a kidney or part of one’s liver to pay off loans is becoming increasingly common in Bangladesh, where desperate villagers are being exploited by human organ traffickers, a Michigan State University researcher has found. (Medical Xpress)

A new issue of Journal of Medical Ethics (Vol 39, No 3, 1 March 2013) is now available online and in print.

There are two major discussions in this issue: Elective Ventilation and Electroconvulsive Therapy.  The discussion on Elective Ventilation is joined by:

• Elective ventilation for organ donation: law, policy and public ethics by John Coggon
• Is providing elective ventilation in the best interests of potential donors? by Andrew John McGee, Benjamin Peter White
• Elective non-therapeutic intensive care and the four principles of medical ethics by Antoine Baumann, Gérard Audibert, Caroline Guibet Lafaye, Louis Puybasset, Paul-Michel Mertes, Frédérique Claudot
• Advance statement of consent from patients with primary CNS tumours to organ donation and elective ventilation by Umang Jash Patel
• Dignifying death and the morality of elective ventilation by Pablo De Lora, Alicia Pérez Blanco
• Honouring the donor: in death and in life by Grant Gillett
• Elective ventilation and the politics of death by Nathan Emmerich

Three entries in the discussion on Electroconvulsive Therapy are:

• Electroconvulsive therapy, the placebo effect and informed consent by Charlotte Rosalind Blease
• Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) from the patient’s perspective by Julie K Hersh
• Electroconvulsive therapy: the importance of informed consent and ‘placebo literacy’ by Charlotte Blease

A new issue of Human Reproduction (Vol. 28, No. 3, March 2013) is now available online and in print.

Articles of interest include:

• Preventing the transmission of pathogenic mitochondrial DNA mutations: can we achieve long-term benefits from germ-line gene transfer? by David C. Samuels, Passom Wonnapinij, and Patrick F. Chinnery [PDF]
• The right of the donor to information about children conceived from his or her gametes by Inez Raes, An Ravelingien, and Guido Pennings [PDF]
• Does long in vitro culture promote large for gestational age babies? by S. Mäkinen, V. Söderström-Anttila, J. Vainio, A.-M. Suikkari, and T. Tuuri [PDF]

Russia says it has opened its own probe into allegations of illegal donor organ trafficking in Kosovo. (Edmonton Journal)

Organ transplant medicine is an incredible life-saving technology, under the right circumstances. Unfortunately, due to a shortage of available organs, a new crime of the 21st century, organ trafficking, is supplying organs to people with the money to pay big dollars for a new life. (The Epoch Times)

German medical authorities are calling for an extensive overhaul of the country’s organ transplant programme after transplant centres across Germany were placed under criminal investigation over allegations that they had systematically manipulated donor waiting lists. (The Guardian)

Seven people, including government workers, were arrested Saturday in Bangalore, India, on suspicion of being involved in human organ trafficking, police said. (UPI)

A man searching for kidney donors, allegedly part of an organ trafficking ring in Ukraine, will be charged in court, prosecutors in Kiev said. (UPI)

All over the world, human rights advocates have petitioned governments to investigate and condemn forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China. (The Epoch Times)

Sana’a Security forces declared that they arrested a group of human organ traffickers on Tuesday. (Yemen Times)

Sir Roy Calne is a pioneer of organ transplants — the surgeon who in the 1950s found ways to stop the human immune system from rejecting implanted hearts, livers and kidneys. In 1968 he performed Europe’s first liver transplant, and in 1987 the world’s first transplant of a liver, heart and lung. (New York Times)

Medical and police authorities are launching a major international probe into the illegal trafficking in human organs for transplants, to help clamp down on the crime, one of the researchers said Thursday. (Associated Press)

The new rule would increase efficiency, but it is unjust in the way it distributes organs. (U.S. News and World Report)

Japan has some of the lowest rates of organ transplantation in the developed world. (The Japan Times)

China plans to launch a national voluntary organ donation system early next year in a bid to fulfill growing transplant lists and phase out its long-criticized reliance on organs from executed prisoners. (Wall Street Journal)

The trial for the largest organ trafficking case in China was canceled recently, on the same day that it was announced that Bo Xilai, the disgraced official, would be stripped of his position in the Communist Party’s legislature, the National People’s Congress. (The Epoch Times)

IT GIVES the gift of life and makes sound economic sense, yet organ transplantation in Europe is approaching crisis-point as waiting lists rise and traditional sources for obtaining organs dry up. (Irish Times)

Last year the authorities learned of 946 victims, compared with 710 in 2010, the inter-departmental ministerial group on human trafficking said. Trafficking gangs in China, Vietnam, Nigeria and eastern Europe now pose the biggest threat to the UK , it said. (BBC)

The first human to have lived six months without a heart on artificial life support has died of liver and kidney failure. (World News Australia)