How much is a healthy kidney worth? The shocking discovery of a black market in human organs in India highlights the gulf between the world’s rich and poor.
Indian officials recently uncovered an illegal kidney transplant racket. Hundreds of poor day-laborers in the city of Gurgaon were being lured to a private house with the promise of a job; others were simply forced there at gunpoint. The laborers would wake up from a state of unconsciousness to feel a pain in their lower abdomen and to discover that their kidneys had been removed against their will. Paid about 50 000 rupees (about 950 euros) for their trouble, their kidneys were then being sold to wealthy foreigners for ten times as much.
It is suspected that between 400 and 500 kidney transplants have been carried out in these backstreet operations in the last nine years. Several people, including doctors, have been arrested, although the doctor accused of heading up the group may have fled the country. The American and Greek foreigners found staying in the luxury guesthouse operated by the doctor in question were allowed to leave India.
The kidney black market is not new to India. Last summer, southern Indian fishermen were found to be selling the organs for money, since their original livelihood had been destroyed by the Indian Ocean tsunami.
The phenomenon is truly (and literally) a symptom of the huge inequality between the world’s rich and poor. Kidney failure, and thus, a shortage of healthy kidneys, is much more common in rich countries because these areas are seeing a rise in obesity. Meanwhile the poor, equipped with healthy kidneys, have a growing need to make money of any kind to feed themselves.
The kidney shortage has led to a debate in the Western medical community on whether or not people should be paid for donating their organs. A vocal proponent of this idea is Canadian transplant surgeon, Arthur Matas. He argues that allowing for the payment of kidney donors would increase the much-needed supply of these organs, thereby saving lives. Matas’s opponents fear such a system would exploit the poor and vulnerable, who might forego proper medical screening.
Kidney sales are currently common, but illegal, in Pakistan, the Philippines and several Eastern European countries and legally sanctioned by the government in Iran.
This article was published Tuesday, February 5, 2008.
