Chinese Boy Blinded After Woman Gouges His Eyes, Removes Corneas In Possible Organ Trafficking Attack
Chinese police are searching for a woman who is being accused of luring six-year-old Xiao Binbin into a field and gouging his eyes out with an unidentified tool. The boy is now blind, although he doesn’t even know it.
“He asks why the sky is always dark… and why the dawn still hasn’t come” his uncle said, according to Agence France-Presse. “We could only tell him that his eyes had some injury and have to be bandaged. (We tell him that) they will be fine after the bandage is removed. It is such a difficult question to explain to him. It is the most heartbreaking thing.”
Hours after the attack, his parents found him, covered in blood. He told authorities that a woman had taken him to the field — she spoke a foreign language and asked if anyone in his family played mahjong. He was supposedly drugged during the incident.
His parents found his corneas nearby, and speculation ensued that the suspected woman was an organ trafficker. Police, however, ruled out organ trafficking as a motive, but said they couldn’t comment on the ongoing investigation. Police are offering 100,000 yuan ($16,000) for information leading to the arrest of the woman.
China banned organ transplants from live donors in 2007, and earlier this month said it would stop harvesting organs from executed prisoners. But with an estimated 300,000 people waitlisted for organ donations each year, there are roughly 130 voluntary donations each month, according to FOX News. This has led to the proliferation of illegal organ trafficking.
“As unimaginable and untrue as this boy’s torment sounds, it shocks but does not surprise,” Professor Arthur Caplan, head of medical ethics at New York University and spokesman for Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, told the Daily Mail. “Whereas hearts, livers, and kidneys must be sourced from donors who match the same blood and boy type of recipient patients, in-demand corneas for corrective eyesight operations can be taken from any age and any body type.”
People seeking transplants can travel to China and, with the right amount of money, organ any organ they need, Caplan says. Last year, Chinese police arrested 137 people, including 18 doctors, for allegedly trafficking human organs nationwide. Prisoners are simply matched to the recipient and “taken out and shot.”
“Anyone who knows where the corneas are located in the eye can extract them… I fear for the unsterile conditions and the barbaric methods used, and that infection may add to the boy’s suffering,” Caplan told the Daily Mail. “He will suffer unthinkable physical and psychological pain.”