`Living cadavers' forced by poverty to sell organs

from The Toronto Star

Few precautions taken, watchdog group says

Leslie Ferenc
Staff Reporter

Demand for healthy organs from patients on long waiting lists in developed countries and rampant poverty in places like India has created an opening for shady operators like Dr. Amit Kumar, according to the head of a group documenting illegal transplant surgery.

Donors of illegally traded organs are the vulnerable and "coerced by poverty," said Dr. Nancy Scheper-Hughes, founding director of Organs Watch in Berkeley, Calif. They become "living cadavers," selling organs like a kidney.

Some allege kidnapping and organ theft, claiming they were lured, drugged or forced to give up a kidney at gunpoint.

Kumar, who has a house in Brampton, is believed to be the kingpin in a kidney transplant ring involving 500 unsuspecting destitute people in India whose organs were harvested. Interpol has issued a warrant for the Indian-born Kumar, dubbed "Dr. Horror."

Americans and the Japanese are the biggest consumers of illegally traded organs, said Scheper-Hughes, an anthropology professor at University of California, Berkeley. Among her fields of specialization is global traffic in organs in countries like Brazil, South Africa, Cuba, Israel, the Philippines, Moldova, Turkey and Romania.

She noted that in many cases, few precautions are taken with donors, including tissue matching. Anti-rejection drugs are strong enough to maintain a kidney even when there is no donor match, Scheper-Hughes noted. And it's common knowledge recipients do better with a living donor that a dead one.

Scheper-Hughes said buyers sometimes make contact with brokers on the Internet or through local ethnic communities where U.S. residents from India or the Philippines, for example, are connected to dealers back home and "can navigate the system."

This past summer, Scheper-Hughes was a member of a task force on organ trafficking across Asia. (Task force members included scholars and medical specialists from Iran, the Netherlands, the Philippines, the U.S., India, Japan, China, Pakistan and Taiwan.) Among its recommendations, were strict laws on transplants, organ harvesting and donation.

Indian laws stipulate living donors can only provide a kidney to a blood relative or spouse. A donor could also be granted special approval to provide a kidney based on so-called altruistic reasons. Corrupt local authorities, however, often bend the rules for personal gain, said Scheper-Hughes.

Some argue the laws are too strict and have forced organ traders to go underground.

The task force defined trafficking as the "recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of people for the purpose of exploitation."

A draft of its report noted trafficking involved illicit means such as "threat, use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction or fraud of deception, of abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability." Exploitation also includes undue influence to encourage or induce people to allow the removal of their organs for transplantation.

On the heels of the Kumar scandal, India's health minister, Anbumani Ramadoss, has vowed to crack down on the illegal trade of organs. According to the Times of India, the government is poised to change the National Organ Transplant Act and get tough with lawbreakers.

The newspaper reported that under planned changes, harvesting healthy organs from brain dead patients will be permitted with incentives to those who donate organs after death.

The government also intends to launch a public education campaign to put the brakes on the illegal organ trade.

The trade was banned in China last year where it was alleged authorities were harvesting organs from prisoners and victims of road accidents without permission. Under the ban, doctors involved in trafficking would lose their licences, participating hospitals or clinics would not be allowed to perform transplants for three years and government officials would be fired.