In my book, I did not describe Dr. Ko as an organ broker.I describe him as a man of SINGULAR COURAGE. Dr. Ko basically admitted that he had stumbled into something terrible in China. He was looking into the quality of care for transplant patients. Elderly people in Taiwan who wanted to get an organ, China is obviously a go-to place. To wait in Taiwan on the list was a death sentence to for somebody who needed a new liver.
This is back in 2004, 2005. China is out there advertising prices, advertising care. So at some point, he is in the Mainland and he goes to a hospital and he talks to the doctors, and they go through some sort of getting-to-know-you process ,and at the end of that process they say, "well, look, we will give your patients from your clinic or whatever, we'll give them a Chinese price, about half the foreigner price." But they also say "we also understand your concerns about organ quality." He was looking out for his patients or his clinic.
In China, you negotiate. Everybody negotiates. Politicians negotiate, businessmen negotiate, doctors negotiate, my mother negotiates for the price of a banana for about 5 minutes in a Beijing market. And there's nothing hidden about that or surreptitious or even evil about it. It is simply the way things of business is done in China.
What he was told though, was something he did not expect. Dr. Ko was basically told "you don't have to worry about the quality of these organs because they are Falun Gongs'. These people they don't drink, they don't smoke, they practice very healthy Chi-gong. Everybody knows the Falon Gong are arrested with no, often aren't arrested at all. They just simply disappear. They were taken in. Everybody knows they're being tortured. I mean, this is not a secret in Taiwan. This was an appalling thing, a terrible thing that he walked into here.
He did something about it. He created a form, an electronic form on his computer and put a lot of work into this, which Chinese doctors would have to use, which identify where every organ came from. He said, "this will only take care of 95% of the problem." He wasn't referring to criminal being harvested, he was referring to Falun Gong being harvested. He was basically saying this would shame mainland doctors. This would give a sense of transparency to the process. This would make them accountable.
There's no other reason that he created this for. In a sense, he was trying to do what the transplantation society tried to do only over the last 2 years, which was to bring accountability to the system, and he was trying to do this alone. This is not a figment of our imagination and we both understood exactly what we're talking about. I played with that form, I moved up and down and I cursored around all over his computer. My researcher did too. I described him as a man of singular courage because this was an act of courage and was a profoundly dangerous act. In fact, he told me that he was banned from the mainland.
Let's go to 2013. I'm getting closer with my book, and at one point, I wanted to put out an article, and I wrote up a text of what I remembered of our interview. It's called "a tale of two surgeons". I sent this text to my researcher Lee Shy. Lee Shy added on a little note to Dr. Ko. "Under the circumstances that we don't mentioned your name ,specific situations ,or any details, is it okay to write this content?" That's number 1. Number 2, "Is his draft of this story below, and it's below, according to reality? Is it factual? Because of the time we didn't record and we didn't ask too much about this direction, so there's some situations we're not too clear about. We just remember the general drift. Could you take a look and tell us where the story is inaccuracies. If it's incorrect, how should it be correctly stated?"
Dr. Ko's answer is right above it. "The story seems okay."
I defy anyone to find significant differences in what's being published here. Then in January, 2014. The request to identify Dr. Ko by his real name was granted by Dr. Ko. Again, there's a long explanation. "We wanted to ask you if you were willing to give us the permission to use your name when mentioning the things you told us. In the past, we just referred to you as an anonymous Taiwan doctor, but it is much more credible with the name. This will help the evidence. You would be doing a great service. Maybe even help save some people's lives." What is his answer?
We ask him for a headshot for the book, and "my best wishes to you", this is Dr. Ko's response. Said the pictures for the book. Now any time in any of these three responses, he could have come back and say, "just hang on a minute." No, he did not. And actually, I don't think that speaks badly about his character. I think that speaks well of his character. I think he's actually a very honest man.