Body Parts For Sale

The scene is a quiet hotel room in midtown Manhattan on a sunny day in February. Two Chinese nationals are concluding a business deal in rapid-fire Mandarin. But this is no ordinary transaction. The men are discussing a straightforward proposition to sell the kidneys, corneas, livers and lungs of executed Chinese prisoners for tens of thousands of dollars. Unbeknown to one of the would-be organ brokers, however, his U.S.-based contact is Harry Wu, the human-rights activist who spent 19 years in Chinese jails and who has just secretly captured their entire exchange on videotape.

With this tape, Wu says, he finally...