BEIJING  - China will start phasing out the use of executed prisoners as a source of organs for transplants next year, a researcher for the government has said, according to a World Health Organisation magazine. China will introduce a new organ donation system to “relinquish the reliance on organs from executed convicts,” Wang Haibo, a senior researcher at China’s Ministry of Health, told the November edition of the Bulletin of the World Health Organisation. “An organ transplantation system relying on death-row prisoners’ organs is not ethical or sustainable,” Wang said, adding that the new system will be launched “early next year at the latest”.