Candidate builds war chest with breast implants

Jim Leonardo

09/01/2010 at 4:00PM

Political fund-raising in Venezuela has gone bust - literally: An opposition party candidate vying for a seat on the country's National Assembly is attempting to add to his campaign coffers by running a raffle that offers breast implants as the grand prize.

"Some people raffle TVs and we decided to offer this," said First Justice Party candidate Gustavo Rojas during a campaign stop in Caracas, according to the news service Reuters. "It's an interesting prize and there's a lot of interest."

Rojas assured voters, who will take to the polls for parliamentary elections on Sept 26, that he would not be the one to perform the procedure. "The raffle is a financing mechanism, nothing else," he said. "It's the doctor who will do the operation; not me."

Of course, if a U.S. politician were to try the same fund-raising approach in the United States, he would be unable to employ a member of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) to perform the procedure. The ASPS Code of Ethics prohibits participation in raffles and other contests when the prize is a surgical procedure.

"The core issue regarding a raffle is patient safety," says ASPS Patient Safety Committee Chair Keith Brandt, MD. "An important component of patient safety is patient selection - in this case, who not to perform a procedure on, because they're not a suitable candidate. Being involved in a raffle takes away the important element of physician judgment. The ASPS Code of Ethics doesn't allow that."

Rojas is reportedly asking $6 for each raffle ticket. The number of breast implant procedures in Venezuela has hit 30,000 annually, according to the Reuters report.