Volume 48 - No. 49
By lyle e davis
Each year, thousands of patients throughout our nation await a donor for a heart, a liver, a kidney, a lung . . .any number of organs necessary to sustain life . . .and to make living easier. They are all available. For a price. Sometimes a heavy price. Sometimes a bargain basement price. But are the bargains really bargains? Take a look and judge for yourself.
In some quarters, the human body is no longer sacred but a The The Paper Paper -- 760.747.7119 760.747.7119
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December 6, 2018
commodity ready to be chopped up and exposed to the forces of supply and demand. You and I may see our own body as an inviolate temple; but, wait . . .if we suddently find we need a spare part . . . are we a bit more open to a business transaction? The statistics suggest that most of us are. In the US and like-minded countries, it’s illegal to sell body parts—they can be taken only from those who filled out a donor card before they died or who are willing to give up an
organ out of sheer benevolence. This means there isn’t enough tissue to go around. So, as with any outlawed or heavily regulated resource, a bustling underground trade has formed.
Sometimes the market in body parts is exploitive: Desperate people are paid tiny sums for huge donations. Other times it is ghoulish: Pieces are stolen from the recently dead. And ever so often, the resource grab is lethal—people are simply killed for their organs. This report will take a look at what
body parts cost here . . . and around the world. In addition to the parts themselves, we’ll look at the surgical costs.
There is a large market for transplant organs in the United States but most of the operations are done abroad. Scott G. Carney, who did an extensive amount of research and wrote of this phenomenon in Wired Magazine, points out: “Americans fly all over the world for kidney transplants, egg donations, surrogacy, adoptions and questionably legal
Cost of Organs - See Page 2