Vatican defends China invitation
VATICAN CITY — Vatican officials defended their decision to invite a Chinese delegation to an organ trafficking conference Tuesday, saying the positives of encouraging reform outweighed criticism that the Holy See was helping white wash Beijing’ s use of organs from executed prisoners.
“Are they doing any illegal transplantation of organs in China? We can’ t say ,” said Monsignor Marcelo Sanchez So ron do, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. “But we want to strengthen the movement for change.”
The Chinese delegation is headed by the former vice-minister of health, Dr. Huang Jiefu, who first publicly acknowledged the in mate organ program in 2005 and later said that as many as 90 per cent of Chinese transplant surgeries using organs from dead people came from those put to death.
In an interview Monday, Huang insisted that China had phased out the practice as promised by 2015. But doubts persist that China is meeting its pledge, given its severe shortage of organ donors and China’s longstanding black-market organ trade. Critics of China’s program had urged the Vatican not to invite the high-level delegation, saying it amounted to a pa pal endorsement.
The Vatican conference is a response to Pope Francis’ efforts to crack down on trafficking in human sand organs. Delegates are to approve a final statement declaring human trafficking for the purpose of organ removal as a“crime against humanity ,” and encouraging countries to become self- sufficient in donation programs to cut down on “transplant tourism.”
The Vatican conference heard that desperate patients flock to countries with lax regulations and cheap rates, including Egypt, India and Mexico, for everything from kidneys to corneas.
Huang on Tuesday proposed the creation of a “global task force” headed by the World Health Organization to crack down on the trade.
China has long been criticized for its lack of transparency in public health. During the global outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome more than a decade ago, China initially covered up the epidemic. By the time China began to acknowledge the true scale of the outbreak, SARS had spilled across Asia and to North America.