Surgeon calls abductions for organ trafficking ‘urban legend

Santo Domingo.- The National Transplant Coordination Institute(Icort) on Thursday discarded the notion that persons are abducted to harvest their organsand called the recent allegation of such a crime "an urban legend."

Icort director Fernando Morales Billini said the complex procedureto extract an organ for transplant involves dozens of specialists, for which it’s impossible otherwise.

The specialist’s remarks come in the heels of the potentialmurder of Carla Massiel, 10, who went missing several months ago, on which somelocal media reported on speculation that it was to extract her organs.

"Every so often myths and legends arise in thepopulation about abduction of children or adults for organ transplant, but iffact it would be impossible that such a thing could happen," Morales said.

"In over 30 years of experience we’ve never seen asingle case of criminal abduction for organ trafficking," said Morales,who warned that those rumors only affect the organ donation process that couldsave the life of a patient.

He clarified that there are other cases of people sellingtheir organs out of economic necessity, but there is no record that there hasbeen trafficked organs.