The Organ Business: Scandals Touch U.S. + Inside Donors’ and Doctors’ Decisions

[Clark]

http://www.diabeteshealth.com/read/2011/08/02/7237/the-organ-business-scandals-touch-u-s--kosovo/

The Organ Business: Scandals Touch U.S., Kosovo
Part One of Two
Clay Wirestone

If you just skimmed the article, it was easy to miss. Two years ago, the FBI busted dozens of New Jersey officials in "Operation Bid Rig." Mayors, rabbis, and pillars of the community had been caught in dirty dealing, accused of corruption, money laundering, and organ sales. That's right: selling human organs.

It was a small part of a big regional story. But that small mention opens a window into a world of money and lies that boggles the imagination. People need organs---the demand is highest for kidneys---and they're not willing to wait. They want action now, and they're willing to pay. The prospect of easy money tempts the poor and desperate, and a market is born.

The problem isn't isolated to one bust from two years ago. Late last year, European Union officials charged seven people with organ trafficking in a Kosovo-based operation. In that case, nearly two dozen foreigners living in "extreme poverty or acute financial distress" were "recruited with the false promises of payments," said European Union prosecutor Jonathan Ratel. They were told that they would receive up to $20,000 for their organs.

In many cases, they received nothing. But their organs were still sold---sometimes for as much as $200,000---to wealthy patients from the United States, Israel, and other countries. The operations were done in medical facilities in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. Officials suspect that this trafficking ring was only part of a larger criminal operation, perhaps based in Israel.

In the 2009 New Jersey case, Brooklyn's Levy Izhak Rosenbaum was accused of setting up organ sales. He told sources that he had been in the business for a decade. "His business was to entice vulnerable people to give up a kidney for $10,000, which he would turn around and sell for $160,000," said Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra.

Others involved in the wide-ranging corruption probe included Peter Cammarano, the mayor of Hoboken, N.J., as well as the mayors of Secaucus and Ridgefield. Several high-profile area rabbis were also accused of running a money-laundering ring through their charities.

What do you think? Should law enforcement officials spend time and effort going after people who set up organ donations for a price? Or are these brokers merely filling a demand? Let us know in the comments below.

In part two of this series, we'll look more closely into why and how people decide to sell their organs.

Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/world/europe/16kosovo.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/07/23/us-corruption-newjersey-idUSTRE56M3QU20090723

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http://www.diabeteshealth.com/read/2011/08/06/7241/the-organ-business-inside-donors-and-doctors-decisions/

The Organ Business: Inside Donors’ and Doctors’ Decisions
Part Two of Two
Clay Wirestone

For the masses of people living in poverty, the prospect of a quick payout seems too good to be true. They give up a kidney---or some other functioning organ---for a few thousand dollars. If all goes well, their bodies still function, and their families may have a ticket out of poverty.

In the world of illegal organ sales, nothing is cut and dried, least of all the morality of the situation. It isn't a simple case of the rich exploiting the poor or of a poorly functioning healthcare system. Instead, the payments and transplants result from a world in which very human people do whatever they can to survive.

How widespread is the problem? According to the World Health Organization, around 10 percent of all kidneys transplanted each year from living donors were sold on the black market. How many transplants is that? Some 6,300.

The decision is wrenching. According to a woman who spoke to The New York Times in 2004, ''I had been on dialysis for 15 years and on two transplant lists for seven. Nothing was happening, and my health was getting worse and worse.'' She said that eventually, ''my doctors told me to get a kidney any way I could.''  If not, she would die.

Dr. Michael Shapiro, chief transplant surgeon at New Jersey's Hackensack University Medical Center, sketched the dilemma faced by doctors. He talked to the Times in 2009, after a corruption bust took down public officials and an organ trafficking outfit.

"When you have the suspicion the donor is doing this for the wrong reasons, the question is-what do we do?" Shapiro said. "I don't have a detective on retainer. I don't have a polygraph. We're pretty good at surgery, but part of the medical school curriculum is not interrogation techniques."

Ultimately, some say, the decision to sell an organ is no one's business but the person doing the selling. Turkey's Dr. Yusuf Sonmez has performed thousands of kidney transplant operations. He also faces accusations in a recent organ trafficking case based in Kosovo (see Part One of this series).

While he requires donors and recipients to submit notarized statements that organs haven't been purchased, he says that he doesn't pry much further. "I don't need to ask these questions," he told the Times in February, "because I do believe that people have their own authority over their own body. They are not stealing, they are not cheating. So this is the shame of the system. Not their shame."


Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/nyregion/30organs.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/world/organ-trade-global-black-market-tracking-sale-kidney-path-poverty-hope.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/world/europe/11organ.html