Seven Heart Transplant Patients Offed In China

Or so says AFP. According to its article Seven killed in China heart transplants:

SHANGHAI (AFP) - Seven people have died in recent years after receiving unapproved German-made artificial hearts at a Chinese hospital, state press reported Thursday.

The Shanghai Eastern Hospital conducted at least nine artificial heart transplants between 2001 and 2005, the Beijing News said, quoting city government officials.

Seven of those patients died and an eighth was left brain-dead, it said. The ninth was said to be alive but in poor health.

The hospital is being sued by the family of one of the patients, Zhou Yiqing, who died in 2005 at age 13 -- a year after receiving the artificial heart.

Seven patients died. One, a 13 yo boy, died one year post-transplant. The article provides no other details about the case, nor any information on the other six deaths.

So how do we know these patients were killed, and who, or what, exactly killed them? The Chinese doctors, the devices, the Germans? Or maybe it was a swarm of locust.

Have the standards for health reporting sunken so low that an accusation of killing patients no longer requires any supporting evidence?