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Buying Organs on the Black Market | The Business of Crime - YouTube
Channel: VICE
[0]
These brokers hide in the shadows.
[4]
Are you OK?
[7]
Are you healthy?
[10]
When people have no money,
when they have nothing else,
[13]
kidneys are becoming the only form
of currency available to them.
[16]
Yes.
[17]
Yes. Everything’s good?
[20]
Do you know you can
live without a kidney?
[23]
Back in 2018,
[24]
Sangeeta Kashyap was
looking forward to a fresh start.
[27]
The offer was almost
too good to be true—
[30]
a stable job in Delhi
with a generous salary
[33]
and the dream of building up
their savings and retirement fund.
[36]
The day after her arrival,
[38]
she was taken to a clinic
somewhere in the city.
[41]
She was told that her employers
required a medical check.
[44]
A few days later, she overheard
herself described as a kidney donor
[49]
during a hospital visit.
[51]
Despite threats,
she took the matter to the police,
[54]
and her complaint
was the spark that uncovered
[57]
a rampant trade in human organs
[59]
involving collusion between
organized criminals
[63]
and corrupt doctors, police,
and medical administration staff.
[67]
A lot of these people
that we would consider
[70]
the tops of their organized
crime rings are doctors.
[74]
And they’re not the ones
that go out to the villages
[76]
and convince somebody to sell
an organ for pennies on the dollar,
[81]
but they are the ones
organizing this trade.
[84]
People with money will never
sell their organs.
[87]
It’s always going to be
a poor person.
[90]
Kashyap’s story
is by no means unique.
[93]
Neither is the body trade
a purely Indian concern.
[96]
She was just one potential victim
in a global industry
[100]
that turns over an estimated
$1 billion every year.
[106]
[THE BUSINESS OF CRIME]
[109]
This is <i>The Business of Crime,</i>
[111]
and in this episode, we’re exploring
the global body trade,
[115]
the ways it operates,
and the risks involved
[117]
for the desperate people
at both ends of the deal
[120]
in what is an unregulated
and often perilous market.
[124]
It’s exploitation
at the highest degree,
[126]
so it’s literally people’s bodies
being taken from them.
[130]
I was over 200,000
taka in debt.
[133]
I took the loans at different
times for my family,
[137]
and I could not pay back the debt.
[139]
Black market organ transplants
have a long and bloody history,
[143]
but it’s only in the last
couple of decades
[144]
that the issue has exploded
into a global concern.
[148]
And there’s plenty
of money to be made.
[150]
A clean heart or lungs will likely
set you back at least $130,000,
[155]
with a liver or kidney
coming in at under six figures.
[159]
Corneas are cheapest of all,
according to the same research,
[163]
coming in at a mere $30,000.
[165]
Every piece of me has the ability
to make money on a market,
[170]
and I’m worth, if I were to sell it,
[173]
probably somewhere
in the order of $250,000.
[177]
This is no niche concern.
[179]
It’s estimated that anything between
[181]
5 to 10 percent
of worldwide organ transplants
[184]
involve illegal payment.
[186]
Kidneys are the most popular,
[188]
with the WHO estimating that
10,000 are sold every year
[192]
on the global black market.
[194]
She knew we were poor, and that
my mother was in debt.
[199]
She persuaded me by talking
about money all the time,
[201]
and I wanted money.
[203]
This is a story about
supply and demand,
[206]
and there are very few
places on Earth
[208]
where the latter doesn’t
outstrip the former.
[211]
Shortage of organs
for transplantation
[213]
is a constant international problem.
[216]
In the US alone, thousands die
every year waiting for new kidneys.
[221]
Others, like China,
employ even more creative solutions,
[224]
such as allegedly harvesting
the organs of executed prisoners.
[229]
The Chinese government says
it’s reformed the practice.
[231]
Now they say they only recover
organs from volunteers.
[235]
But some say the practice continues.
[239]
They had these, I mean,
essentially organ conveyor belts
[242]
where these prisoners would be
anesthetized but still conscious
[246]
and be completely harvested.
[247]
They’d harvest their corneas,
their kidneys, and their hearts.
[251]
And they would just sort of like
liquidate these bodies
[254]
and then sell them,
mostly to the domestic market
[256]
but also the international market.
[259]
Transactions often take place online,
[262]
with Facebook
an enduringly popular marketplace.
[266]
Others operate through slightly
more sophisticated scams.
[269]
In September 2021, Indian police
arrested a Nigerian man in Bangalore.
[275]
Gregory Yermadeh allegedly
spent three years
[278]
running an elaborate
online kidney-selling ring,
[281]
duping poverty-stricken customers
with fake websites
[285]
mocked up to resemble those of some
of the country’s leading hospitals.
[289]
When people have no money,
when they have nothing else,
[292]
they’re having to sell their kidneys,
[294]
so kidneys are becoming the only
form of currency available to them.
[297]
Some have made the libertarian
argument for the body trade—
[301]
why should it be illegal
when demand is so high?
[304]
Surely with even the impoverished
sellers getting what they need,
[308]
it’s the definition of
a victimless crime?
[311]
This categorically isn’t the case.
[314]
For many, free will
and consumer choice
[316]
have nothing to do with it.
[318]
Many participants in the body trade
are victims of human trafficking,
[323]
tricked into giving over their organs
for little to no pay.
[327]
Appalling stories are easy to find.
[329]
In October 2016, Pakistani police
freed 24 people
[334]
from an apartment block
in Rawalpindi.
[337]
They were due to be
taken to a nearby hospital
[340]
for forcible kidney removal
after months in captivity.
[344]
<i>The police are convinced that</i>
[345]
<i>most of the people in that apartment
were tricked</i>
[348]
<i>and had no intention of selling
an organ when they arrived there.</i>
[352]
<i>They’ve arrested four people so far,</i>
[354]
<i>and they’ve charged them
with offenses</i>
[355]
<i>including abducting
and imprisoning people.</i>
[358]
<i>They say they’re now searching
for four doctors</i>
[361]
<i>who are apparently the kingpins.</i>
[364]
Due to its secrecy, the scale of
the problem is hard to assess.
[368]
Naturally, few traffickers
publicly advertise their organ farms.
[372]
In 2018,
[373]
the UN published a report detailing
700 cases of organ trafficking,
[378]
which is likely a wild underestimate.
[381]
There are no statistics out there
that accurately catalog
[386]
how large the illegal market
for organ trading is.
[389]
It would be ridiculous to think
that mafia groups
[393]
are submitting statistical
information to regulatory bodies.
[397]
The trade thrives on desperation.
[400]
Egypt is another country
at the frontline of the body trade.
[403]
Refugees make for
a captive client base
[406]
as they pass through on their way
across the Mediterranean.
[410]
Selling organs might be
the only means of paying smugglers
[413]
for uncertain passage.
[415]
They were targeted basically
because of their financial situation
[419]
and because they were less likely to
report anything to the authorities.
[421]
The body trade isn’t quite
a straightforward tale of winners
[425]
and losers.
[426]
Misery certainly isn’t
exclusive to the sellers.
[430]
Often, buyers end up in hospital
with complications of their own
[434]
following botched
or unsafe transplants.
[436]
They’re not necessarily
being screened properly,
[438]
or they’re not necessarily being
matched directly with the recipients.
[441]
There’s been studies done
[443]
with patients who have returned from
overseas having purchased a kidney
[447]
and they’ve had a number of
health complications,
[449]
so infections and poor outcomes
[451]
with how they’ve received
the kidney itself.
[454]
Exploitation runs two ways,
[456]
a fact that illegal organ
entrepreneurs are only too aware of.
[461]
Desperation makes people do
previously unthinkable things.
[466]
These red markets
prey on desperation.
[468]
It’s the value of human life
that’s on the line here.
[472]
Nobody willingly sells a kidney
on the black market
[476]
without seriously dire reasons.
[478]
Just as surely,
no one is looking to buy
[481]
unless facing a grim outcome
of their own.
[485]
Getting rid of predatory networks,
[487]
like those who tried to
prey on Sangeeta Kashyap,
[489]
is a decent start.
[491]
But the grim fact is
[493]
there’s no shortage
of others right behind them
[496]
ready to take their place in a world
where demand for organs
[499]
far outstrips the legal supply.
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