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Targets of Organ Trafficking - Reading Exercise

Organ trafficking victims are generally poor, vulnerable populations who are recruited through brokers promising money. Living donors most commonly have a kidney removed, though they often do not receive full payment and can face increased debt. While organ buying and selling is illegal, victims willingly selling organs are sometimes treated as criminals rather than victims.

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59 views3 pages

Targets of Organ Trafficking - Reading Exercise

Organ trafficking victims are generally poor, vulnerable populations who are recruited through brokers promising money. Living donors most commonly have a kidney removed, though they often do not receive full payment and can face increased debt. While organ buying and selling is illegal, victims willingly selling organs are sometimes treated as criminals rather than victims.

Uploaded by

Hà My Trần Hoàng
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Targets of Organ Trafficking

Organ trafficking is possibly one of the most covert forms of human trafficking. A global
shortage of organs has driven the industry, relying on poor populations to be donors
and wealthy foreigners to be recipients.

Organ trafficking victims, as with most human trafficking victims, are generally poor,
vulnerable populations. There are rare instances where victims are put under anesthetic
and wake to find their organs missing or are murdered for their organs. As a whole,
coercion of living donors is more common. It is most common for victims of organ
trafficking to be recruited through brokers, who are individuals who recruit organ
suppliers and connect them with organ recipients. Recruiters/brokers are usually people
who may be from the same communities or ethnicity of a vulnerable population so as to
build trusting relationships easier. The recruiters then make promises to the organ
suppliers like large sums of money or release from debt, and convince them that the
organ is not needed. Specifically in the case of kidneys, the most commonly harvested
organ from living donors, recruiters will tell victims that the kidney will grow back, having
two kidneys is unnatural, or that they have a large and a small kidney and removal of
the small kidney is harmless. Victims rarely receive the full amount of money promised,
if they receive any compensation at all. In some cases, the post-removal healthcare
costs for a living organ trafficking victim add to their previous debt and worsen their
financial situation

There is a difference between “trafficking organs” and “trafficking persons for the
purpose of organ removal”, which makes it difficult to combat both forms of trafficking
and also to identify victims. Trafficking organs is an instance where the crime is buying
and selling of organs, as a product, illegally. Trafficking persons for the purpose of
organ removal occurs when the person is the product and the purpose of trafficking
them is for their organs.

Victims who “willingly” sell organs are sometimes treated as criminals involved in an
illegal transaction, which would be trafficking in organs. This criminalization is a
deterrent for victims to pursue their compensation when they have been recruited and
exploited by brokers.

The recipients of trafficked organs are generally wealthy, and participating in transplant
tourism. One study estimates that 70% of organ recipients are not registered organ
donors, which some advocates argue is an unfair distribution of an already limited
resource. Recipients may have reached a point of desperation, cannot wait any longer
for a legal donation, be deemed unsuitable for transplant domestically, or may not want
to ask relatives for a living donation. Some recipients may even be unaware of organ
trafficking and are responding to ads that seem legitimate from hospitals and medical
professionals abroad that promise the organ transplant for one flat fee.

China is especially well-known for organ trafficking, with reports of prisons executing
prisoners to illegally harvest their organs against their consent when they are a potential
match for a recipient. The United States, Canada, the Czech Republic, and Israel have
begun to take action to prevent their citizens from engaging in transplant tourism
involving China. Alternatively, organ procurement through purchase in Iran is
sometimes legal, as Iran is the only country in the world where it is legal to sell organs.
Iran has established a base price for organs at $4,600, but that is only when the organs
are procured legally–which is often not the case, as poor people still go through brokers
and are paid an unknown, under-the-table price. One would hope that only a few
isolated countries are major participants in organ trafficking, but unfortunately it is a
global business where organs are bought from the poor and sold to the wealthy. Organ
recipients participating in transplant tourism are mostly traveling from the United States,
Canada, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Japan, and Taiwan into Costa Rica, Panama,
Ecuador, Colombia, Egypt, Kosovo, Cyprus, Israel, Azerbaijan, China, and the
Philippines to receive organs. While not necessarily hot locations for transplant tourism,
the following countries have been identified as organ recipients: Australia, Canada,
Israel, Japan, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. India, Pakistan, China,
Bolivia, Brazil, Iraq, Israel, Moldova, Peru, Turkey, and Colombia have all been
identified as common organ sellers.

Task 1: True, False, Not Given:

1. All organ recipients are wealthy


2. Kidneys are the most expensive organ in the black market
3. The recruiters/brokers are usually the people from rich community

4. The person who is willing to sell his/her organs can be considered as a


criminal
5. Executing prisoners are considered as a “illegally source” for organs
harvesting in India

Task 2: Choose the best answer

1. Who are the most common victims of organ trafficking?


a. Tourists in foreign countries
b. Outcasts and poverty-stricken population
c. Other dying patients
d. Executing prisoners

2. What is the most common organ taken from living donors?

a. A kidney
b. A portion of lung
c. A portion of liver
d. Testicle
3. The organ trafficking victims can be considered as criminals in
which situation?

a. When they are put under the anesthetic and taken the organs away
b. When they are killed for their organs
c. When they are willing to sell their organs
d. When they have to remove some of their organs due to their health
problems

4. The phrase “Under-the-table” has the closest meaning to:

a. Public
b. Easy to catch
c. Difficult to understand
d. Secret, hidden action

5. Which option does not contain all the recipients’ countries?

a. US, Japan, Saudi Arabia


b. Australia, Israel, Peru
c. US, Canada, Oman
d. Canada, Israel, Australia

Task 3: Short answer

a. What is the most common way for organs to be taken from the donors?

b. What is the percentage of recipients who registered organ donors?

a. Name 3 countries identified as organ sellers?

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