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AfD nomination of The blackmarket kidney
An article that you have been involved in editing, The blackmarket kidney, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Articles for deletion/The blackmarket kidney. Thank you. Do you want to opt out of receiving this notice? nancy (talk) 14:05, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

What is a Black Market Kidney?
Black Market Kidney is the removal of the kidney of the human body from a dead or live human willfully or not, for the purpose of transplanting them into a person with ill kidneys, against the laws of organ transplatation. These practices have led to “transplant tourism,” in which patients travel from wealthier countries without a black market organ trade to parts of the world where both an organ and operation can be had for a price. (Handwerk) This practice is using compenstion instead of compassion. The kidney recipients are faced with getting a kidney or to die. It is illegal in the United States to pay for an organ. So the patients are faced with the ill fate of how far they will go to live. The world health organization issued guidelines in 1991 to avoid coercion or exploitation of organ donors. They were endorsed by 192 countries, including the United States, Brazil and South Africa. But the guidelines are not binding, and the recommendations have been widely ignored. At least one country, Iran, has a legally regulated system to trade organs. (Rohter) In the U.S. selling kidneys along with other organs is a felony under a 1984 federal law that was passed by Senator Al Gore, and is punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $50,000. A multi-million-dollar scam emerged January 2008 when Indian police raided several hospitals and houses in Gurgaon, a wealthy New Delhi suburb. (Asia)

The Supply and Demand of Kidney Transplants:
In 2002 U.S. doctors performed 24,900 lifesaving organ transplants but the waiting list featured more than 80,000 people alone and most of that was for kidneys. As desperation grows so many an illicit trades in human organs in much of the developing world. In 2002 over 6,000 Americans died while waiting for organs. The problem is that on the one side there is tremendous poverty, on the other side desperation on the part of people who need the organ. (Pasricha) The world has a low donation rate compared to the people in need. Then there’s the expense of the dialysis to the healthcare system- about $45,000-$50,000 per year. And only some 10 percent of dialysis pations live more than 10 years. (Abraham McLaughlin) At the end of 2004 there were 57910 patients on the waiting list and there were 27131 new patients in registration for the waiting list and there were 15671 donors in 2004. Although the supply continually rises for kidneys the demand is rising at a much faster pace. The percentage of patients who remain on the waiting list multiple years continued to increase. Twenty-two percent of active waiting list patients at the end of 2004 had been waiting three years or more, compared to just 14% at the end of 1995 The percentage waiting less than one year declined over the previous decade, from 48% to 38% of the active waiting list. Approximately 60% of waiting list patients had a panel reactive antibody (PRA) level less than 10%, compared to only 49% in 1995, while those with a PRA greater than 80% decreased from 20% to 13%. Glomerular disease, diabetes, and hypertension remain the most common primary diagnoses among active waiting list patients, at 22%, 27%, and 20%, respectively. According to data from the U.S. Renal Data System, the rate of incident diabetic ESRD appears to be leveling However, it is likely that diabetes will remain among the most common primary diagnoses of waiting list patients in years to come (HRSA)

The Kidney experience of China, Brazil, and India compared to United States:
China prisoners who are on death row are killed sometimes for minor offenses and their organs are harveseted. Several patients claimed to have paid $10,000 for their kidney. In 1996 more than 4,000 prisoners were killed. Money from patients purchasing organs is dispersed among those who provide access to the prisoner’s body. Hospitals even pay judges to tip them off when they sentence a suitable donor to death. The money goes to officials all the way up the line. Wei Jingsheng, an agitator at Columbia University’s Human Rights center testified that while he was on death row a guard confided that often organ removal is the means of execution. Prisoners are given blood tests and medical exams to assess compatibility with arriving patients and the court date is set to the execution date. The practice of flying to China for organs becomes a crime if arrangements were made for a fee on American soil. (Erik Baard) One of the most gruesome human-rights abuses in today’s world is China’s trafficking of its own executed prisoner’s body parts to American residents. The prisoner’s are harvested of their skin and the half-dead convulsing prisoner has their kidneys immediately extracted and then are cremated. Approximately 90 percent of transplants perfomed in China use human organs taken from executed prisoners, according to Henry Hyde, the chairman on international relations. (Williams) It’s illegal to buy or sell kidneys in China. But a 1984 law allows organs to be transplanted from an executed prisoner. (Abraham McLaughlin)

Black Market kidneys in Brazil were formed by a retired Brazilian military police officer and a former Israeli police officer. In Brazil the minimum wage is barely $80 a month and work is hard to find. Many Brazilians are homeless and starving. Some Brazilian donors were being paid up to $25,000 for their kidney for a cost of $60,000 for the kidney recipient. Some surgeries are done in Brazil and some Brazilians are being shipped to South Africa where they sign a form saying they are a relative of the recipient. One Brazilian man received $6000 for his kidney that fed his family for years. A 1997 law makes it illegal to sell any organs including kidneys and forbids anyone from soliciting them but the punishment is only 3 years in prison. In 1998, Brazil passed a law making every Brazilian adult an organ donor at death. (Abraham McLaughlin)

In India there is a desperate neighborhood known locally as “kidney village” because so many of its residents had illegally sold one of their kidneys. Villagers received about $800 for a kidney, which for them is a year’s salary. (Handwerk) Nepali donors are paid between $400-$1,200 for a kidney, with the buyers paying between $15,000-$20,000. (Pasricha) There are huge profits to be made with this multi-million-dollar scam. Not all people from India donate their kidneys willingly for money. In southern India the victims were all poor, illiterate villagers who had arrived in Bangalore seeking work. They were told to submit blood tests for their job and in the hospital they were given injections that knocked them unconscious and when they awoke to find a huge bandage around the waist and told they had fallen. It is estimated that nearly fifty illegal kidney transplants are still carried out every day in India. (Williams) Even though, India government tried to stop illegal transplants with a 1994 law that criminalizes organ sales but allows for “unrelated kidney sales”, a loophole that has led to corruption. (Abraham McLaughlin) Wealthy foreigners, including Americans, often are the transplant recipients of these illegally donated organs willing to pay from $10,000 to $40,000 for the total operation. (Williams)

The Risks involved in Black Market Kidneys
In Brazil, among the men who did give up a kidney, some say they have experienced health problems that no one warned them about. Some are even robbed of their money after the transplant... (Rohter)The American doctors are in an ethical delima. Although they find recipients of illegal kidneys morally wrong they fill they have an obligation to do the aftercare for them to the best of their ability. One American doctor reported that a Chinese American woman who had appeared at the hospital, implanted with a death row kidney was now suffering from hepatitis, the patient became one of the complicated cases referred to NYU. (Erik Baard) Doctors are forced in a don’t ask don’t tell policy.

What can we do to help?
Doctors say that the kidney trade can only be curbed by increasing the number of legal donors to bridge the gap between demand and supply. (Pasricha) In 2001, Dr Ratner, then at the John Hopkins Hospital performed the first kidney swap. When relatives ant to donate but do not match, kidney exchange between families can help patients that waits on the transplant list and the serious decline in health that often occurs in people who are on dialysis years at a time. The procedure requires a transplant program with enough staff to find matching families and perform four operations at once. Transplant experts are trying to develop a nationwide system to coordinate kidney swaps. The group concluded that the only way to protect patients from being cheated out of a transplant was to put them all under anesthesia at the same time so that no one could back out. (Denise Grady) Some scientists are hoping to master techniques that allow newborns in future generations to be equipped with a genetic repair kit-stem cells or other tissue frozen at birth. (Erik Baard) President Bush signed the Organ Donation and Recovery Improvement Act on April 5. The act authorizes federal government to reimburse living donors for expenses and to offer project grants aimed at increasing donations and improving organ preservation and compatibility. (Abraham McLaughlin) Works Cited Abraham McLaughlin, Ilene R. Prusher, Andrew Downie. What is a Kidney Worth? 09 June 2004. . Asia, Channel News. Nepal Police parade illegal kidney kingpin. 09 February 2008. . Denise Grady, Anahad O'Connor. The Kidney Swap. 05 October 2004. . Erik Baard, Rebecca Cooney. China's Execution, Inc. 01 May 2001. . Handwerk, Brian. Organ Shortage Fuels Illicit Trade in Human Parts. 16 January 2004. . HRSA. KIDNEY TRANSPLATION IN THE UNITED STATES. 2007. . Pasricha, Anjana. Illegal Human Kidney Trade Thrives in India. 14 February 2008. . Rohter, Larry. The Organ Trade: A Global Black Market. 23 May 2004. . Williams, Margaret. Margaret's Writing. .