Everyone’s heard the urban legend about a person who wakes up in a drugged haze to discover that her kidney has been surgically removed. To people in some parts of the world, that spooky rumor is apparently all too true.
Recent Must Reads
12/12 – Grizzlies headed for grisly end 12/9 – Biodiversity buys the farm |
In an interview published in FREEZERBOX, a Canadian physician reports that such incidents take place routinely in many poor countries where organ trafficking is big business. Some organ thieves, he says, will regularly attack — and even kill — homeless people and children to make off with the valuable organs.
Demand for human body parts, particularly from wealthy countries, keeps the global black market for gizzards booming. A human heart, the physician says, can fetch $5,000 and each gram of bone is worth many times its weight in cocaine.