The director of
Incucai
-the body that regulates and supervises organ donation and transplants in Argentina- flatly rejected the libertarian initiative that promotes the sale of organs in the country, after
Javier Milei
returned to focus on that market system and raise the possibility of "seeking mechanisms to solve the problem".
"This
madness
of the organ market is a fantasy that is not viable. It is absolutely like thought and a search for a
very marginal practice
, very combative for international consensus," Carlos Soratti launched in a radio interview.
Without naming him, he pointed to the presidential candidate by remarking that "he is very out of focus and
his position is so extreme and absurd
that it is unfortunate to have to speak about it based on expressions that
go back a century
because they are debates from the beginning of transplants, in the middle of the twentieth century".
"Thinking or talking about these things is
the worst damage that can be done to a system
because there is great zeal to avoid this. Otherwise, societies would have a very different attitude," he added on
Radio 10
.
And he continued: "When you talk about the freedoms that this man proposes, he is actually talking about
the freedom of the rich who has the possibility of buying a lot of things
. He is not thinking about the donor, about society, about the list of wait or in health care.
It's an outrage
."
After the great controversy that he generated in the middle of last year when he declared himself in favor of the sale of organs and considered it as another "market", Milei returned this Tuesday night to express his opinion on the matter and proposed "to look for market mechanisms to solve the problem".
"One of the things that I have raised is that more than 350,000 people die per year.
By law they are all potential donors.
There are 7,500 people who are suffering, waiting for transplants. There is something that is not working well," argued the candidate for president for La Libertad Avanza in an interview he gave to
TN
.
When promptly asked if "the sale of organs seems good to him", the national deputy for the City of Buenos Aires avoided giving a specific answer and pointed out: "What I am saying is that things do not work as they are
"
.
In this regard, Dr. Soratti left a message for Milei.
"There is a global consensus about donation and transplantation. It is the consensus on the need for regulation in all states and this is a recommendation from the World Health Organization. It is a consensus of the entire scientific world and of the regional and subregional organizations the need for
very strict regulation of a process as sensitive
as organ donation for transplantation".
In this sense, he remarked that "the fundamental objective is to guarantee availability for transplantation, but to allocate such a scarce resource with highly agreed and transparent criteria to those who need a transplant."
"The laws in all the health systems in the world where this practice is carried out precisely aim to guarantee the transparency of these processes to society, because otherwise it would be impossible," he said.
The director of Incucai exemplified this by recalling that in 2008 "the International Transplant Society together with other scientific societies, in the context of the WHO call and many world experts on this subject, released the Istanbul Declaration where they talk about
extreme measures of regulation and supervision
to avoid the transit of people to obtain a transplant, this is the so-called transplant tourism based on the asymmetries that occur in unequal developments".
Justina's father's response
Ezequiel Lo Cane, father of Justina, the 12-year-old girl who died waiting for a heart transplant and promoted the law on organ donation, also came out to respond to Milei.
He explained that "there are not seven thousand people who are waiting for a transplant, but rather they are on a list and in an emergency, due to their state of health, and they need a transplant soon."
In this sense, he pointed out that there are 30,000 people on dialysis.
"15% of transplants are kidney, from there comes the number of 200,000 people who at some point in their life will need a transplant
at some point in their life
," he said in dialogue with
AM 750.
And then he insisted that "the waiting list is the capacity that the system has today to carry out a transplant and that it does not cover the entire list."
Ezequiel with his wife as they hold a photo of their daughter.
Photo: Silvana Boemo
Justina's father said, without evading the question, that there are still things to be resolved and adjusted around the law: "There are things to improve of course, but how to improve? By
promoting crossover transplantation
, for example," he said.
Regarding Milei's opinion, he concluded: "I am very open to debate even if they come up with strange questions like these. Words can convince or not, but acts are devastating and the Justina Law is an act."