Tag Archives: organ transplants

Big discounts at the Organ Loft!

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Popular culture side-swipes reality when it comes to organ-theft. Organ theft is a “trope” (a recurring motif, AKA cliché) in many Japanese anime and manga, and in American comic books, video games, and television (C.S.I.; Law and Order; Justified, Futurama). Examples:

Robin Cook, Coma (1977). The recent development of successful transplantation techniques suddenly creates an imbalance between the supply of and demand for organs, so a black-market arises. A deranged doctor in a Boston hospital induces comas in healthy patients undergoing minor procedures, then harvests the organs.

“Coma” (1979). The movie version of the book, directed by Michael Crichton.

1989: a Turk came to Britain, sold a kidney, got stiffed on the payment, and lied to the police that he had been robbed of a kidney. This is the origin of the urban legend about “I woke up in a bath tub full of ice…”

“Death Warrant” (1990). No one cares what happens to the inmates in maximum security prisons. An evil warden, corrupt guards, and a greedy doctor, kill inmates to harvest organs for sale on the black market. The very institutions that guard us are actually criminal.

“The Harvest” (1993). Writer goes to Mexico, gets robbed of a kidney, tries to find the people responsible, partially succeeds, and then finds out that his boss has just had a transplant.

Christopher Moore, Island of the Sequined Love Nun (1997). Predatory missionaries.

“Dirty Pretty Things” (2002). Hard-pressed illegal immigrants in Britain sell organs.

“Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” (2002). Hard-pressed South Korean factory worker sells a kidney to save his sister’s life, gets cheated, she dies, and he wreaks a bloody vengeance.

“Shichinin no Tomurai (The Innocent Seven)” (2005). Seven groups of abusive parents get an offer from a mysterious figure. They’re likely to either kill their kids or lose them to the child welfare people. Why not make a different kind of “killing” by selling the children so that their organs can be harvested? A week at a mountain vacation camp will close the deal. This may reflect Japanese discomfort with transplants, plus the Aum Shinrikyo terrorist cult.

Kazuo Ishiguru, Never Let Me Go (2005). Test tube babies + cloning = human spare tires for when you come down with some life-threatening disease. Your liver goes? Just pop one out of the “donor” you paid to have created many years ago. Now everyone can live to be 100! In the meantime, the future donors are raised in ignorance of their intended function.

“Turistas” (2006). The developed world has exploited the developing world for centuries. (See: Andre Gunder Frank.) Now it is time for reparations. A deranged doctor abducts gringo tourists who visit a remote beach resort. He harvests their organs, which are donated to the poor in a Brazilian hospital.

“Repo! The Genetic Opera” (2008). In the sinister future a big corporation supplies organs for transplant on credit. Transplant technology has progressed so far that you can get replacement intestines and spines. If you fall behind on your payments, however, the company sends around some guys to re-possess your implanted organ, just like your car or washing machine. The consequences aren’t the same as having your car or washing machine repoed, however. You die. The movie is a musical.

Eric Garcia, Repossession Mambo (2009). Uses the same sinister future/big corporation/buy on credit/get repoed premise as above. Adds bio-mechanical organs/people hiding from their creditors and being hunted by repo men twists for product differentiation.

“Repo Men” (2010). The chop-socky movie version of Garcia’s novel.

“Never Let Me Go” (2010). The excellent movie version of Ishiguro’s novel.

Give my knees to the needy.

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Organ transplantation.

In the 7th Century BC,[1] a Chinese physician named Bian Que tried transplanting the heart of a strong-willed commoner into the body of a weak-willed emperor.

During the late 19th Century surgeons finally developed the technical ability to conduct operations (knowledge of how the body functioned, anesthesia, antiseptics) and this made transplants possible. However, it took much longer to develop the ability to prevent rejection of the implanted organ by the body’s immune system. Thus, the transplanted “Hands of Dr. Orloc” (1924) weren’t. Lung (1963), liver (1967), and heart (1967-1968) transplants were “successful” in the sense that the patients lived for weeks to months after the operation. In 1970 the development of the immuno-suppressive drug cyclosporine finally permitted successful transplantation to begin. Since 1970 transplants have become common: hearts, lungs, kidneys, livers, pancreases, hands, facial tissue, and bones have all been transplanted. No brains, yet.

The mismatch between donors and recipients.

Generally, there are more sick people in need of an organ than there are dead people with healthy organs for “harvesting.” While the growth of organ transplantation has extended many lives, people often die waiting for an available organ. National medical systems have developed ways of determining who gets priority.

However, there are two issues to bear in mind. First, national boundaries create barriers between donors and recipients. Second, as we have seen in so many other areas, great differences of wealth and income between different parts of the world lets buyers in rich countries get what they want in poor countries. People with money who want to jump the line can seek organ transplants abroad. One outcome of globalization has been to create a market in organs for transplant.

The global trade in organs.

Some Asian countries used to have a legal market in organs: India (until 1994), the Philippines (until 2008), and China (to this day) all allowed the legal sale of organs. Sometimes governments participate in this trade. An estimated 90 percent of the organs from China are taken from criminals executed in prisons. (They used to shoot them in train stations.)

There is also a thriving black-market in organs. The average price paid to a donor for a kidney is $5,000, while the average cost to the recipient is $150,000. When the Indian Ocean tsunami wrecked many fishing villages, about 100 villagers—almost all of them women—sold kidneys. According to one report, 40-50 percent of the people in some Pakistani villages have only one kidney. “It’s a poverty thing. You wouldn’t understand.”

Both the desire to circumvent the laws at home and the need to be close-by when an organ becomes “available” have stimulated “medical tourism.”

Finally, there is the alleged problem of “organ theft.” Given a shortage of voluntary donors, it has been suggested that some middle-men may turn to theft or murder. This is a common theme in horror movies and urban legend. It doesn’t have much truth behind it. Which isn’t the same as saying it doesn’t happen at all. “Hey buddy, can you give me a hand?”

[1] I can just see the Three Wise Men—one of them played by Buscemi—impatiently flipping through the calendar in 1 BC, marking off the days until Jesus would be born, trying to get a cheap flight, then getting told that Bethlehem’s inns are all booked solid: “Zoro-H-Aster! What are we supposed to do, stay in a manger?”