Is Someone Buying or Selling a Kidney?

[okarol]

Is Someone Buying or Selling a Kidney?

Are you seeking an organ donor and you've been contacted by somebody trying to sell an organ?

Are you a potential donor who has been offered money to buy an organ?

If so, please send us a message with the IHD user ID of the person who has contacted you about this illegal action or if it's an email please forward it to admin@ihatedialysis.com. We'll do what we can to notify legal authorities and to block this person from using the IHD forum again. While we can't guarantee we can stop people like this, we'll do what we can to keep you from being associated with illegal activities like buying and selling organs.

Please note:
From the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984, as amended:
Title 42 - The Public Health and Welfare
Chapter 6A - Public Health Services
Subchapter II - General Powers and Duties
Part H - Organ Transplants

Sec. 274e. Prohibition of organ purchases
(a) Prohibition
It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human organ for valuable consideration for use in human transplantation if the transfer affects interstate commerce.

(b) Penalties
Any person who violates subsection (a) of this section shall be fined not more than $50,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

(c) Definitions
For purposes of subsection (a) of this section:

(1) The term "human organ" means the human (including fetal) kidney, liver, heart, lung, pancreas, bone marrow, cornea, eye, bone, and skin or any subpart thereof and any other human organ (or any subpart thereof, including that derived from a fetus) specified by the Secretary of Health and Human Services by regulation.

(2) The term "valuable consideration" does not include the reasonable payments associated with the removal, transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control, and storage of a human organ or the expenses of travel, housing, and lost wages incurred by the donor of a human organ in connection with the donation of the organ.

(3) The term "interstate commerce" has the meaning prescribed for it by section 321(b) of title 21.



okarol/admin

[Rerun]

No one has offered to sell me a kidney!

                     

[okarol]

No one has offered to sell me a kidney!

                     

  Well don't try selling any of yours either! 

[YLGuy]

But mine were owned by a little old lady who only used them to drive to church on Sunday.    That is my car.

[RichardMEL]

I got one a few years ago from soneone supposedly offering to hook me up with the Philipinnes(I think) for $70k or something. I didn't respond or take it very seriously. Will definitely keep it in mind if I get something in the future.

[BASSMAN]

But mine were owned by a little old lady who only used them to drive to church on Sunday.    That is my car.

My car broke down and I had to get a new transmission.  Out the door it cost me over 3 grand.  When I paid the dealership for the repair, I said, "I am going to have to sell a kidney to pay for this".  Me and my wife broke out laughing.  The lady behind the desk looked rather miffed about it.  I hope she doesn't know or have someone in kidney failure.

Oh well, just my sick sense of humor.

[Wallyz]

I got one a few years ago from soneone supposedly offering to hook me up with the Philipinnes(I think) for $70k or something. I didn't respond or take it very seriously. Will definitely keep it in mind if I get something in the future.

Sounds like mitch the organ broker. I think he's in jail now.

[Deanne]

I had a message like this last week, but I already deleted it. If I get another one, I'll forward it. I'm not 100% sure it came from IHD though. It came to my hotmail account, not to my IHD email. This is the only kidney message board I hang out in, so I assumed someone got my email address from my profile here.

[Jie]

Take it easy for buying and selling kidneys. If more than half of patients do buying, I would get my kidney very soon.  So we, patients on the waiting list, are benefiting from this. Whether this law itself is moral or not is debable. This law is making more patients die each day.

[Hemodoc]

Take it easy for buying and selling kidneys. If more than half of patients do buying, I would get my kidney very soon.  So we, patients on the waiting list, are benefiting from this. Whether this law itself is moral or not is debable. This law is making more patients die each day.

My wife is Filipino and it would have been very easy to by a kidney with my connections to the Phillipines which I would never do.  I find it absolutely reprehensible that renal disease is now becoming an excuse for a new colonial behavior in the western world.  This is most especially true when we consider that daily dialysis has equal survival to cadaveric transplant.  The only manner in which to keep the facade of morality of selling organs is to ignore that proven fact.  I will live or die with my renal disease but I will not enslave another human being by virtue of the wealth I have to escape it.  Anyone that spends even a modicum of time on the plight of the poor that become organ vendors in Pakistan and other parts of the world would not view it as anything but an evil act of greed upon them by merchants treating them as a commodity.  DSEN has many posts discussing the moral and ethical and medical reasons why this should never be allowed in this nation. 

http://www.billpeckham.com/from_the_sharp_end_of_the/2008/08/most-iranian-pa.html

I applaud IHD and Okarol for her stand to maintain the standards of IHD.

[Jie]

  I will live or die with my renal disease but I will not enslave another human being by virtue of the wealth I have to escape it. 

This statement has a hidden assumption that living donation is unsafe. If this were true, we should not have living donation at all.

[okarol]

  I will live or die with my renal disease but I will not enslave another human being by virtue of the wealth I have to escape it. 

This statement has a hidden assumption that living donation is unsafe. If this were true, we should not have living donation at all.

To me it means that we should not take advantage of another human just because we can afford to pay for their organ. (I think.)
And living donation is certainly a risk, the important thing is that the donor has full knowledge and informed consent of those risks.
Far greater minds than mine have debated the issue of selling/buying kidneys and I imagine the discussion will continue - hopefully with the best outcome for every one.

[Hemodoc]

  I will live or die with my renal disease but I will not enslave another human being by virtue of the wealth I have to escape it. 

This statement has a hidden assumption that living donation is unsafe. If this were true, we should not have living donation at all.

The problem with your statement is that it is not an assumption that it is unsafe in organ vendors, it has already been shown:

A socioeconomic survey of kidney vendors in Pakistan

In recent years, Pakistan has emerged as one of the largest centres for commerce and tourism in renal transplantation. Kidney vendors belong to Punjab in eastern Pakistan, the agricultural heartland, where 34% people live below poverty line. We report results of a socioeconomic and health survey of 239 kidney vendors. The mean age was 33.6 ± 7.2 years (M:F 3.5:1). Mean nephrectomy period was 4.8 ± 2.3 years. Ninety per cent of the vendors were illiterate. Sixty-nine per cent were bonded labourers who were virtual slaves to landlords, labourers 12%, housewives 8.5% and unemployed 11%. Monthly income was $US15.4 ± 8.9 with 2–11 dependents per family. Majority (93%), vended for debt repayment with mean debt of $1311.4 ± 819. The mean agreed sale price was $1737 ± 262. However, they received $1377 ± 196 after deduction for hospital and travel expenses. Postvending 88% had no economic improvement in their lives and 98% reported deterioration in general health status. Future vending was encouraged by 35% to pay off debts and freedom from bondage. This study gives a snapshot of kidney vendors from Pakistan. These impoverished people, many in bondage, are examples of modern day slavery. They will remain exploited until law against bondage is implemented and new laws are introduced to ban commerce and transplant tourism in Pakistan.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/117999398/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

You are making an assumption that paid organ donors will have the same outcomes as highly selected living donors in the western world where only the most healthy were allowed to donate.  We have very limited studies on these people and they compare their survival to the general population.  This may be flawed in part due to lack of a control group as well as the inability to measure the expected survival in those that did donate when selection was stringent and whether they would have actually lived longer than the general population.  In short, we do NOT have all the evidence needed to answer this simple question because we do not have donor registry to follow all of their outcomes.  When you look at the only legal organ market in Iran and the illicit markets in Pakistan,  your assumption would be incorrect.

In addition, there is a 1/3000 death rate for living donation in the US as well as documented decline in renal function at a rate higher than the general population.  People that donate kidneys do die during the procedure and I remember a case of that happening a couple months ago that was noted in the news.  For those that make an informed choice and are NOT under coercion, it is their choice to take that risk.  People that are coerced are not considered legally to have made a free choice.  That is the issue with paid organ donation which would exploit the poor in the industrialized nations just as it does in the third world nations.  In such, the ethical prohibition against an organ market is quite justified.

Bill Peckham just placed a post on DSEN about this very issue. 

http://www.billpeckham.com/from_the_sharp_end_of_the/2010/07/aei-publishes-another-kidneycentric-call-for-an-organ-market.html

[Jie]

I agree with Hemodoc and Karol regarding the buying and selling of kidneys in the many poor countries. I don't want that kind of practices in anywhere. What I like to change is to have a system that can have a high standard to evaluate donors.  No any donors can donate without passing the evaluation. The problems with the poor countires are lack of enforcement for evaluations and illegal activities (black markets). If a donor can pass the same evaluation as in the current U.S. centers, whether she or he gets paid is a moral issue, not a major health issue. I would not like to play rich/poor cards. In this world, few things can be strictly equal. If everything is equal to everyone, then we would not want to live in it.

[natnnnat]

Found this article.  I wonder what things like "There were 70% of vendors isolated from society" means, and how it was measured [scratches head] but this is from the journal of urology so I suppose they handled their study with some rigour.  I also wonder how they found 300 vendors to take the survey at all... so I have some questions about what the statements made below mean, but still, they are pretty full on results, for example,  "They responded that if they had another chance 85% would definitely not vend again, and 76% strongly discouraged potential vendors from "repeating their error."
n

Zargooshi, J. (2001). "Quality of life of Iranian kidney "donors"." The Journal Of Urology 166(5): 1790-1799.
   PURPOSE: The quality of life of Iranian kidney vendors was clarified. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A questionnaire was completed by 300 kidney vendors 6 to 132 months postoperatively (median 61). Interviews and living conditions were videotaped. In addition, the 300 vendors and 100 controls that underwent nephrectomy for benign disease completed the RAND 36-Item Health Survey (SF-36). RESULTS: Poverty prevented 79% of vendors from attending followup visits, and vending caused negative effects on employment in 65%. Of the families 68% strongly disagreed with vending, which caused rejection of 43% and increased marital conflicts in 73% of vendors, including 21% who divorced. There were 70% of vendors isolated from society, and 71% had severe de novo postoperative depression and 60% anxiety. Vending caused somewhat (20%) to very (66%) negative financial effects. It also had negative effects on the physical abilities in 60% of vendors who were mainly unskilled laborers, and 80% were dissatisfied with postoperative physical stamina, which was decreased mostly by depression. Of the vendors 37% concealed the truth of kidney sale from anyone, 14% disclosed it only to spouses, 43% to first generation relatives and 94% were unwilling to be known as donors. The mental preoccupation with kidney loss was usually (30%) to always (57%) present and interfered negatively with vendor life, and 62% reported negative effects on sense of being useful. Effects on general health were somewhat (22%) to very (58%) negative. When thinking about vending, the majority cited negative feelings. They responded that if they had another chance 85% would definitely not vend again, and 76% strongly discouraged potential vendors from "repeating their error." Half the vendors were ready to lose greater than 10 years of life and 76% to 100% of properties to regain kidneys. Compared to controls, vendors had significantly lower scores on all SF-36 scales (p <0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Our sample is a good representative of Iranian kidney vendors, with the majority having psychosocial complications. Globally, the medical community should focus more attention on motivations, quality of life, health and opinions of kidney vendors.

[mogee]

If there were an unregulated market in kidneys from living donors it would be hard to try to prevent the commercialization of cadaveric kidneys.  Families would attach a price tag to the kidneys of their deceased kin and only the wealthy would get transplants.

[okarol]

If there were an unregulated market in kidneys from living donors it would be hard to try to prevent the commercialization of cadaveric kidneys.  Families would attach a price tag to the kidneys of their deceased kin and only the wealthy would get transplants.

Everyone could get the deceased donor kidneys if there was a flat rate, paid by insurance. But then maybe a family would start bumping off dispensable cousins.... that might be a problem.

[kremizin]

70K!!! the middle men are the ones getting the huge part of this sum. last time i heard, the donor only get 3k more or less for their kidney.  4 years ago, my friend had his transplant and it cost him more or less 20k all in all.  he doesn't know who the donor is and im sure it was from someone who sold his kidney.

[Riki]

Even if I had the means, which I don't, I don't think I could buy a kidney and go about my life with a clear conscious.  It just seems incredibly wrong to me

[okarol]

A few members have received emails or PM's from a spammer. Please let me know if you ever get anything like this:

Welcome to china for kidney transplant，Waiting time is two weeks.
I come from Guangzhou China, Our major is organ transplant, I hope our website can provide the transplant info for you. If you or your friends need to have a kidney transplant, please visit our website.

The member who sent this has been banned for life. It's one thing to have an open discussion on the forum, but to spam our members, no way.

[okarol]

Received from UNOS:

Federal Trade Commission Alert Regarding Alleged Scam of Transplant Patients

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently received notification of an alleged scam whereby patients waiting for an organ transplant are contacted by phone and requested to provide money in exchange for receiving a donor organ. It is unlawful to buy and sell organs for transplant in the United States. If you are contacted and requested to provide money to obtain a donor organ, please contact the FTC immediately by phone at 1-877-382-4357 or by Internet http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/contact.shtm. In general, if you are approached to buy or sell an organ for transplantation, immediately notify federal or local law enforcement.

[sutphendriver]

Got this one the other day...FYI



Welcome to china for kidney transplant，Waiting time is two weeks.
I come from Guangzhou China, Our major is organ transplant, I hope our website can provide the transplant info for you. If you or your friends need to have a kidney transplant, please visit our website：
http://mag********
E-MAIL: hla********
MSN：hla*********
TEL: 0086*********
FAX: 0086**********


Edited: Thanks. I am removing the contact info so as not to perpetuate the spam.

okarol/admin

[breezysummerday]

Sent a copy of the e-mail I received this am Miss Karol
~debs

[Deanne]

I got one this morning, too.

[okarol]

I am sorry this is happening. If you get a similar email please forward it to me:
ihatedialysis@yahoo.com

We can track the sender's IP address and ban the culprit.

okarol/admin