IMAGE: CNS photo/Stringer, EPA
By Carol Glatz
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — No country is immune to the
trafficking of organs, which has become a global problem that demands a
concerted and cooperative response, said a number of speakers at a Vatican
summit.
To encourage nations to create, tighten or implement
legal and ethical best practices for organ donation, the Pontifical Academy of
Sciences brought together government ministers, judges, law enforcement
personnel, medical professionals, human rights activists and journalists Feb. 7-8.
While much media attention focused on the Vatican
inviting officials from China, which has been criticized by human rights groups
for harvesting organs from executed prisoners, the Vatican also invited
representatives from more than 50 nations, especially those plagued by organ
trafficking, including Mexico, India, Pakistan and Iran — where the sale of
human organs is legal.
The point of inviting countries struggling with or
condoning the organ trade was to give them the impetus, contacts and pledges of
cooperation from governments, professionals and organizations that would like
to see and help them reform, said Francis Delmonico, a U.S. surgeon, expert in
transplant policy and academy member who moderated the final sessions.
The summit goals, according to the program brochure, were
to describe the extent of organ trafficking and transplant tourism, share ideas
for prevention and legal frameworks, ask participants to pledge to common goals
and engage all sides to work together and build alliances to stop organ
trafficking.
“Don’t miss the alliance that is there before
us,” Delmonico told participants. And new alliances will be formed among
prosecutors, legal experts, governments, U.N. agencies and the public,
spreading awareness about the growing exploitation of the poor and vulnerable
to work around long waiting lists for organ transplants.
“How can we be of help,” so the summit is not
just an exercise in “talk,” but prompts real change in India, he
asked Saneep Guleria, a transplant surgeon in India and member of its national
kidney and transplant institute.
Delmonico then turned to Huang Jiefu, chairman of China’s
national organ donation and transplantation committee, and told him the final
statement the academy wanted to draft would call for the eradication of
procuring organs from executed prisoners.
“How can we bring this to your government to achieve
that goal,” the U.S. surgeon asked.
Huang told the assembly that China “is different
from the West” in terms of its cultural and political system, but that the
current leadership was “very open-minded” and “strongly
supported” his calls for reforming “what’s happening in China.”
He reiterated a desire for reform and added that
“international cooperation rather than international pressure” is the
better approach to take in helping China “move forward and engage with the
world.”
“We wish to assure you of that cooperation,”
Delmonico said.
“The problem is worldwide. No one is
untouched,” Shashank Bengali, South Asia correspondent for the Los Angeles
Times, told the summit.
He urged government officials and legal and medical
professionals to “treat media as partners in this effort” and reach
out to or cooperate with them to help broaden awareness of human trafficking.
“Journalists are eager to report” on
trafficking and to share victims’ stories, which often resonate very deeply
with readers and viewers, he said. Many write or comment to the news outlet
asking how to help address this issue.
Naziha Syed Ali, a writer for Dawn, an English-language
news outlet in Pakistan, said, “media are useful in holding government
accountable” and “shining the light in dark corners.” She said
they are also a safe conduit for doctors who want to expose wrongdoing they are
aware of, but hesitate to report because they are afraid of repercussions by
the criminal networks that trade in organs.
John Gill, a Canadian professor of medicine at St. Paul’s
hospital in Vancouver, said doctors have a duty to speak to their patients who
want to seek an organ transplant abroad about the health risks involved.
“People think it’s like getting your toenails
clipped,” he said, when instead there are often no records or assurances
of what went on during the procedure, the medications used and the condition of
the organ, which could be diseased.
Doctors should object when they see the potential for
organ trafficking and exploitation, he said. Some patients needing an organ
“think it’s no big deal to sell a kidney,” especially if they aren’t
aware of the deception involved or poverty driving the recruiting of donors.
Kristof Van Assche, a professor of health law at the
University of Antwerp, Belgium, said many doctors are unable to fully cooperate
with law enforcement because medical confidentiality laws prevent them from
disclosing information about their patients.
He said lawmakers would have to make specific exemptions
for reporting knowledge or suspicions a patient is seeking to pay for and
receive an organ abroad.
Illegal transplants are possible because of complicit
medical professionals and lawyers, who are sometimes the ones providing the
fake passports for travel abroad, said Nelufar Hedayat, an Afghan-born
journalist with the BBC.
When investigating organ trafficking in Bangladesh,
Hedayat was told by a surgeon that he saw nothing wrong with what he was doing
because “no one is dying. We’re saving someone’s life. How can we be
wrong?”
“Surgeons are godlike,” she said. “They
are supposed to save you” not cause people harm, instead “they propel
a falsehood.”
The impoverished and
coerced donors, too, become caught up in the traffickers’ game as “victims
were often turned into middle men,” finding more donors among the poor in
“one big Ponzi scheme.”
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