Questions mount over death of medical student who alleged organ trade in Chinese Hospital
Family members question Chinese probe that deemed the case a suicide. And many in China support them.
An undated photo of Luo Shuaiyu. Weibo
Reporter
After a months-long probe over the death of a Chinese medical whistleblower, authorities labeled it a suicide. But his parents and the public aren’t convinced.
Luo Shuaiyu, a medical intern at the Second Xiangya Hospital, was weeks short of completing his graduate studies when he was found dead outside his school dormitory building in May 2024, with two buttons missing from his shirt. A pair of his glasses was found broken on his bed.
His death occurred amid the investigation of a Chinese physician from the same hospital who had operated on patients who didn’t require surgery. The physician, Liu Xiangfeng, was sentenced to 17 years in prison months after Luo’s death.
Luo had collected a large trove of materials implicating Liu and others in the hospital in intentionally harming patients and engaging in the organ trade.
A person close to the Luo family told The Epoch Times that Luo had resisted complying with the hospital’s demands to find child donor organs. He died just after he expressed his intention to report the hospital.
In a June report on the probe, Chinese officials, along with the hospital-affiliated Central South University, jointly concluded that Luo had jumped off the building.
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Luo’s parents, who are dedicated to uncovering the cause of their son’s death, found the authorities’ pronouncement hard to accept.
“Not much issue here, just that the announcement doesn’t line up with reality,” Luo’s father wrote on Chinese social media platform Weibo.
The Luo family later issued a joint statement challenging the official narrative. The makeup of the investigation group itself already had conflicts of interest, they said. Aside from the fact that the university had a stake in the matter, the family suspected bias in at least one other team involved in the probe. A branch of the Changsha public security bureau that co-led the effort had previously dismissed suspicions around Luo’s death.
“This investigation is, at its core, them investigating themselves,” the family’s statement read.
Many among the Chinese populace appear to agree. Social media posts from the Luo family have often generated tens of thousands of shares. One video from Luo’s father, in which he thanked the public for their support, was played 14 million times.
“It’s us who need to say thanks,” one person wrote under the post. “You and your family paid a heavy price for this to come to light today.”
Handling of Organs
Luo entered the Xiangya School of Medicine of Central South University in 2021 for his master’s and interned at Second Xiangya Hospital’s kidney transplant department.
In clinical rotations, he worked under Liu, the deputy director for the hospital’s hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery.
Anonymous complaints at the time were stacking up against Liu online. People who said they were victims and hospital insiders said Liu exaggerated patients’ symptoms, sold them expensive drugs of dubious quality, and often pushed for costly surgeries on made-up grounds.
One person claimed that the doctor removed a relative’s pancreas and spleen over cancer concerns even though no cancer cells were found. Another accused Liu of removing a healthy gallbladder and inserting gallstones into it to show the patient’s family. In the summer of 2022, public anger forced the hospital to suspend Liu and open a probe, which found Liu guilty of impairing five patients and causing light injury to another. None of the patients required surgery in the first place.
Luo was working with Liu months before the surgeon’s downfall, according to screenshots of his private conversations and recordings reviewed by The Epoch Times.
A secretly recorded video by Luo suggests that Liu had taken nearly five feet of small intestine from a patient, telling the emergency room doctor, “The longer the better.”
It remains unclear what Liu did with the intestine. In a complaint against the hospital, Luo’s parents, citing one four-hour-long conversation, said Liu had claimed that he had “other purposes” for the organ, a phrase they took to mean organ transplant.
Liu wasn’t the only one implicated in the complaint.
In a July 2022 post on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, a Xiangya hospital doctor told patients seeking a kidney transplant to prepare 200,000 yuan for a “kidney source fee,” on top of the surgery-related costs, indicating that the hospital has “commercialized” trading of organs, the Luo family wrote.
Luo stated in his résumé that he had taken part in more than 200 kidney transplant surgeries over a three-year period.
Almost right after receiving the school’s admission letter, Luo received a task from a Xiangya kidney transplant surgeon. The surgeon instructed him to obtain 12 child organs, six from each sex, for the hospital to use as “specimens,” according to recordings obtained by The Epoch Times. He had yet to find enough by the time of the incident, Luo’s relatives said.
A separate recording shows Luo in a nearby city to pick up two kidneys. A male voice asked him whether he wanted the liver as well, and after he replied no, the person asked another person.
“This time, we strike it rich,” a different man appeared to have answered, followed by laughter.
Screenshots posted by Luo’s father on social media show that Luo received more than 440,000 yuan ($61,000) for “billing of services” between 2021 and 2023; he transferred much of the money to a head nurse of Xiangya’s kidney transplant department, raising concerns about money laundering, Luo’s family said.
Official Narrative Questioned
Luo’s family found the materials on Luo’s laptop and phone after his death. A significant portion of data in the months leading up to the incident were missing from the devices, and the family spent more than a month partially retrieving the information. One folder created in 2022 is called “complaint materials,” according to screenshots Luo’s father posted online.
The family said the police forced them to sign a document agreeing to determine that the case was a suicide before giving them back the items.
Their screenshots showed that the hospital had wired them 853,000 yuan (about $119,000) shortly after Luo’s death and asked them not to talk about the issue.
Chinese officials said the money transfer issue mentioned by the Luo family showed mismanagement in the division Luo worked at, and that they had reprimanded four individuals involved, including the head nurse.
The official announcement acknowledged having copied documents from Luo’s devices but denied changing or deleting anything. It claimed not to see the folder the family cited and suggested that Luo had taken his life over poor academic performance.
Luo’s family has been appealing the case, with continued public support.
In a June 17 article, a Chinese law professor at Sichuan University noted the widespread skepticism over the results of the investigation and echoed the Luo family’s concerns about conflicts of interest.
“No one should be the judge of its own probe,” he wrote, adding that civil society, such as lawyers, journalists, and medical experts, should have a part in reviewing questions left unaddressed in the investigation.
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