MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine Congressman Javier Milei favors trade of human organs

Why does everything have to be regulated by the State? - Milei argued

Argentine Libertarian Congressman Javier Milei said he was in favor of the sale of human organs or transplants because “it is just another market.” After stirring controversies among authorities coordinating these operations, Milei insisted that under a free market, transplants “would work much, much better”.

National Central Institute for the Coordination of Ablation and Implantation (INCUCAI) President Carlos Soratti replied that Milei's statements were “absurd.”

Soratti added in a TV interview that in “no country in the world” are transplants “a market like any other.”

“The organ transplant system in Argentina works with a high level of trust on the part of society and a very positive attitude of solidarity,” he added.

“Between five and six transplants are performed every day” nationwide, Soratti also pointed out.

Asked whether leaving transplants at the mercy of market rules would improve the current mechanism, Soratti insisted that “this issue is a century behind, since the bioethical debate that developed the history of organ transplantation.”

“At that time, the major cause of the need for a transplant was renal failure, which still has the largest waiting list today. The removal of an organ from a healthy individual was considered a crime in any country in the world, which is why all countries developed specific regulations,” he added.

In the early 1990s, the World Health Assembly dictated the guiding principles of transplantation and regulatory frameworks. Then additional “documents were produced to fight against 'transplant tourism' and organ trade,” Soratti also pointed out.

These occurrences are now fought by all regulatory bodies in all countries,“ he went on.

Milei had said in a radio interview that the sale of organs was ”just another market“ and wondered ”why everything has to be regulated by the State“.

”My first property is my body, why shouldn't I be able to dispose of my body, why shouldn't the State dispose of my body, when in fact it steals more than 50% of what I generate,“ Milei argued.

”In other words, there is a double standard: for the State to enslave me, then yes, but if I want to dispose of a part of my body for whatever reason, what is the problem?“ the lawmaker said.

”It is an individual's decision. That is to say, who am I to interfere with another person's body? The person who decided to sell you the organ, in what way did he affect the life, the property, or the freedom of others? Who are you to determine what he has to do with his life? If it is his life, his body, his property....“.

”There are studies done in the United States that show that, if you free those markets, they work much better and have fewer problems. It is up to each individual to decide,” Milei said.

Earlier this week, the member of Congress had also launched another controversial idea, although one already in use in parts of the United States: that prisons are privatized and inmates pay for their stay with their work.