News briefs

China harvesting organs from religious minorities, UN told

The lawyers for the Independent Tribunal Into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience In China (China Tribunal) have told the United Nations’ Human Rights Council that China is harvesting and selling organs from “persecuted religious and ethnic minorities”. Presenting the final report of the Tribunal last week, Mr Hamid Sabi told the Council the UN had a “legal obligation” to act because the Tribunal had found “the commission of crimes against humanity against the Falun Gong and [Uyghur minorities had] been proved beyond reasonable doubt”. According to a report in The Independent, the organ transplant industry is estimated to earn China more than $1 billion a year. Sir Geoffrey Nice, QC, chair of the China Tribunal, told a separate NGO‐hosted UN event that the international community “can no longer avoid what it is inconvenient for them to admit”. Mr Sabi concluded his speech to the Human Rights Council with: “Victim for victim and death for death, the gassing of the Jews by the Nazis, the massacre by the Khmer Rouge or the butchery to death of the Rwanda Tutsis may not be worse than cutting out the hearts and other organs from living, blameless, harmless, peaceable people.”

https://chinatribunal.com/

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-religious-ethnic-minorities-uighur-muslim-harvest-organs-un-human-rights-a9117911.html

Anxiety disorders linked to mitochondrial disturbances

Mitochondria provide energy for cellular functions, but its activities can be disturbed when chronic stress leads to anxiety symptoms in mice and humans, according to Finnish research published in PLoS Genetics. Chronic stress caused by life events, such as divorce, unemployment, loss of a loved one, or war, is a major risk factor for developing panic attacks and anxiety disorders. Not all people who experience stressful life events develop such disorders, and scientists are trying to identify why some people are resilient to stress but others are vulnerable to anxiety. The Finnish research team studied mice that developed symptoms of anxiety and depression, such as avoiding social interactions, after being exposed to high levels of stress, assessing changes in gene activity and protein synthesis in a brain region critically involved in stress responses and anxiety. The analysis identified several changes in the mitochondria of brain cells of mice exposed to frequent stress. Further, blood samples from patients with panic disorder collected after panic attacks exhibited similar differences in mitochondrial gene activity, suggesting that changes to cellular energy metabolism may be an evolutionarily conserved response to stress. The discovery that high levels of stress may disturb mitochondrial function opens new avenues for research into stress‐related diseases.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1008358