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Scientists gather in Vatican to discuss organ trafficking, transplant tourism

Xinhua, February 8, 2017 Adjust font size:

Over 70 scientists, experts and officials from different countries and various international organizations attended a gathering in Vatican Tuesday to discuss the situation of organ trafficking and transplant tourism in bid to set up further guidelines and ethics rules in curbing illegal activities worldwide.

According to the World Federation of the Catholic Medical Associations, the objectives of the two-day Pontifical Academy Summit (PAS) on Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism are to describe the widespread extent of transplant tourism and organ trafficking while preparing a statement referable to the PAS, which would be signed by the participants.

The association said the major playing parties will include government officials, prosecutors, investigators, justices, and journalists, who can be influential in the long term in combatting organ trafficking in an alliance with transplant professionals.

The scientific forum also aims to develop an alliance of individuals committed to combating organ trafficking and transplant tourism, while engaging health authorities to achieve a prohibition of organ trafficking as "a form of human slavery," it said.

The summit was expected to "create a top-down and bottom-up movement in society, to raise awareness of the extension and seriousness of this modern challenge and lay the groundwork for moral and appropriate solutions based on human dignity, freedom, justice and peace," the association said on its website. Endit