The Cost of Living - who is stitching up who

[HS Thomas]

There are 20,000 people in the UK desperate for a kidney transplant
but last year only 1700 got one.
How much would you pay to save your own life ? How far would you go to give your family a better one ? Welcome to the reality of the human organ trade. The dying , the desperate and the brokers in between.
Picture this scene in what looks like an underground men's toilet :
3 kidneys packed on ice they could be mistaken for boxing gloves apart from signsof bleeding onto the ice.
Three price tags next to each of them.
Indian male : $500
Israeli female : $18,000
US male : $50,000
Russian grandmother 'wanted to sell child for organs'

[Jeroen Wenting]

organ theft and smuggling is already becoming recognised as a major trend and is only expected to get worse.

[HS Thomas]

A 16-year-old boy from the Punjabi capital Amritsar, interviewed for BBC Radio 4's File on Four, described how he was taken to a safe house near a hospital and introduced to the patient he was being paid to help - without being told the truth. "I'd been told I was donating blood but the doctor said he had removed a stone," he said. "It was when I left hospital I found out they had removed my kidney."

"What we need in this country is an opt-out system where everyone can be considered a donor unless they carry a card expressly wishing that their organs are not used for transplant," she added. "This site plays on the desperation of people, especially liver patients, who face death unless they get a transplant."

link

One suggestion is that governments could control the trade by inviting living donors to donate kidneys to a "pool" in return for payment. The organs would be allocated from the pool to the most suitable recipient and the safety of the donors would be assured by careful screening and monitoring of their care.
Governments could have an interest in such a scheme because of the huge cost of maintaining kidney patients on dialysis: pounds 20,000 to pounds 30,000 a year, double the cost of maintaining a transplant patient and for a worse quality of life.

Actually the cost of treating kidney patients on dialysis should come down. I believe that a re-usable dialysis machine has been invented in India but a German company is patenting the manufacture. Can't remember any names though.
I assume after a kidney transplant the dialysis machines are not required.
[ May 06, 2004: Message edited by: HS Thomas ]

[Ashok Mash]

Originally posted by HS Thomas:
Actually the cost of treating kidney patients on dialysis should come down. I believe that a re-usable dialysis machine has been invented in India but a German company is patenting the manufacture. Can't remember any names though.

That might help poor patients who are in need of dialysis, but it doesn't free from the tedious process of living hooked to a dialysis machine every day (or couple of days per week) to a machine!
I think buying and selling organs should be made legal � it would help the patients who are dire need of it and most importantly, will help to control the illegal organ trade that�s going on now � and am the illegal trade now feeds only the thugs and international gangsters playing broker between the paying party and the organ donor. For example, a broker based in America charges $55000 to arrange kidney for a middle aged male British patient, and he sources it from India (or elsewhere) and in India for example, the organ donor gets paid a mere $600!!
I would say, make it legal, starve the middleman, help the poor and give a chance at life to the unfortunate patient.