When families or individuals are tired of spending years on a medical waiting list, they sometimes purchase body parts – kidneys, eyes, lungs, heart, limbs and more – for transplant on the black market.
It sounds like science fiction, but organ harvesting is an unfortunate fact in the criminology world of today.
Organ harvesting has been tied to human trafficking and has become a booming business in the 21st century on a global scale. It is a criminal offense to traffic body parts, or perform transplants from any source not legally affiliated with a hospital or other medical facility, but legality doesn’t deter either side of these transactions.
Notably, quite a lot of illegally-trafficked body parts are harvested by any means necessary, and are gladly received, no-questions-asked, by the person willing to pay top dollar for a kidney, a heart, or a hip.
According to the American Transplant Foundation, 123,000 people in the United States are on the waiting list to receive an organ. Every 12 minutes a new name is added to the list and an average of 21 persons per day die due to a lack of organ availability. Corneas, kidneys, liver, lung, intestines, bone marrow are the most common transplant needs.
The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services data of Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network reports 121,333 currently awaiting organ transplant of which 100,402 are waiting for a kidney. Only 30,970 transplants actually took place (legally) in 2015. According to the World Health Organization, America is one of many organ-importing countries and by the use of the web, patients can get transplant packages from $70 to over $160,000.00.
USA Today conducted an investigative report in 2006 and found that illegal body harvesting is very lucrative in the U.S. due to the high demand of body parts. The investigation revealed that from 1987- 2006 (19 years), over 16,800 families had pursued lawsuits stating that their loved ones body parts were illegally sold for an estimated $6 million dollars. That amount is based on figures obtained from federal and local investigators, public organizations and medical universities.
When a failing heart, liver, or other vital organ proves resistant to all available forms of treatment, a dying patient’s only shot at survival may be an organ transplant. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough donor organs to save all the patients who need one. Feeling desperate with precious time running out, some patients may attempt to purchase an organ illegally. In fact, thousands of sales or purchases of black market organs take place every year, according to the World Health Organization.
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