It’s a cash cow for hospitals in China, and inviting plenty of controversy:

Doctors and human-rights groups around the world have decried China’s practice of harvesting organs from prisoners condemned to death. Concerned that lucrative foreign transplants create an incentive for China to execute more prisoners, critics in Israel are pushing for legislative restrictions. Last week, in part due to what it called the growing problem of transplant tourism, the World Health Organization proposed that countries around the world establish common practices on organ transplants.

Foreign transplant patients have become a cash cow for China’s hospitals, which are desperate for funds after a collapse of state funding for medical care. China’s medical sector is chaotic and loosely regulated, and many foreigners can pay far more than Chinese citizens can for organ transplants. The money at stake is so great that doctors and others involved in the transplant industry say transplant tourism will be hard to stamp out.