Journal won’t retract paper that involved human organ transplants in China

The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation (JHLT) has decided against retracting a November 2024 paper that  violated the ethics policy of the publication. 

After publishing the paper, which describes a new mechanical circulatory support device used to treat heart failure that was developed in China, staff at the journal realised two of the patients in the study had received organ transplants in that country. 

Dozens of research articles have been retracted or flagged for appearing to have used organs procured from executed prisoners in China, and many journals around the world have introduced policies to avoid such research. JHLT’s ethics statement, published in 2022, bans data on human organ transplants from journals or scientific sessions when they originate from countries, particularly China, where organ procurement from prisoners has been observed.

The study, “Long-term outcomes of a novel fully magnetically levitated ventricular assist device for the treatment of advanced heart failure in China,” has been cited twice, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. 

The study’s abstract was initially presented at the annual meeting of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation, which runs the journal, said cardiologist Joseph Rogers, president and chief executive officer of the Texas Heart Institute and the editor-in-chief of JHLT. 

After a “lengthy debate,” Rogers said, the editors decided retracting the paper would be an “inappropriate response” despite the journal’s ethics statement.

“We didn’t want to convey to the readership that there was something scientifically invalid about the paper,” Rogers said. “That’s not true. The paper was scientifically valid.”

The journal also printed two editorials, one by the journal’s then interim editor-in-chief, Michelle Kittleson of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, who initially accepted the study, and the other about the journal’s ethics statement, signed by the JHLT’s ethics committee. 

Retraction Watch has reached out to Savitri Fedson, of the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, and a co-author of the editorial about JHLT’s ethics statement.

Rogers said the journal published the editorials to recognise JHLT missed the issue and had violated its own ethics commitments. If the issue was spotted beforehand, he noted, JHLT would have rejected the study. Going forward, the journal has put in “additional safeguards” to prevent violation of the ethics statement, Rogers said. 

Shengshou Hu, the study’s corresponding author, who is based at Fuwai Hospital in Beijing, has not responded to a request for comment from Retraction Watch.

As part of the safeguards, all papers are now sent to Rogers, who desk-rejects any papers involving human organ transplants in China, he said. That step is particularly  important, he noted, because peer reviewers working for the journal are not required to read the publication’s ethics statement. 

Rogers said the journal contacted the study’s authors. “What we really wanted to do was reassure them that the reason that we were editorializing their paper in this manner was not because of the scientific content of the paper,” he added. “It was really a failure of our internal checks and balances that allowed that paper to move forward.”

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