Organ trade and trafficking are crimes that we are all listening about, but have the impression that this is something that can not happen to us or someone from our surrounding. But there are some things everyone should know about black market organ trade and trafficking, which will prove you that you need to pay more attention where and who you are hanging out with.
No matter how this sounds terrible, but this kind of illegal practice represents the multi-billion dollar industry and it doesn’t always mean that organ harvesters are doing this against their will. Although in most cases, people are simply kidnapped on the street and have their organs taken with anesthetics, without them even being aware of, or are declared delusional by doctors, there are also people eager to make easy money by illegally selling their organs.
Only the US has about 118,000 people on a transplant list, but, for some reason, mostly of religious nature, people are still against donations of their organs after their death, which decreases the chances for these 118,000 people to get off the transplant list. This is why, on average, 21 people die every day due to the lack of donors. In 2015, only 30,970 legal transplants are recorded.
In my opinion, once you are dead, you don’t need your organs. They will die with you. So why wouldn’t you give someone else the opportunity to live? Also, liver transplant is the easiest operation and liver is also proven to be the only organ in human body that regenerates. When it comes to this kind of surgery, doctors take only one tiny part of donor’s liver and transplant it to the other patient’s body. After a while, both donor and a patient grow a liver in themselves and live normal life. But people are still unwilling to make this kind of effort even for their family, which is why 5 to 10 percent of illegal liver transplantation together with the liver transplantations worldwide are made illegally.
Also, the fact is that organ trafficking is not an easy business at all. There are many people involved and there are many things that have to be taken into consideration. On the average, besides patients and seller, there needs to be an experienced surgeon willing to do this operation, traffickers, who are in charge of the transfer and brokers for trade. According to the Global Financial Integrity, around 7,000 kidneys are illegally harvested on a yearly basis.
Besides being illegal, this kind of organ trafficking comes with great risks, such as infections and, in many cases, death. The autopsy of Kendrick Johnson showed that he was missing organs, but there weren’t any records of that in a medical chart. Unfortunately, investigators were unable to prove that he was the victim or forced organ trafficking.
You can also take a look at 10 black market organ trade and trafficking facts, statistics, and stories that Insider Monkey’s research team collected and inform yourself better about this topic. Hopefully, this article will raise the awareness of the treats around every corner, but also of the humanity.
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