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Peter_Puget

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I don't see why my knowing someone would change the reality of the large organ trade market. According to reports many people every year sell organs because they need the money.

Edited by j_b
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I don't see why my knowing someone would change the reality of the large organ trade market.

 

Which is over-regulated, I might add.

 

No joke. The spin has been that congress was wrong to ban organ sales.

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UCLA's Cadaver Scandal and Trade in Human Organs

 

Los Angeles, Alta California

March 10, 2004

 

The arrest over the weekend of UCLA's Director of the Willed Body Program, Henry Reid, and criminal investigation of others at the University of California for the illegal sale of body parts is only the "tip of the iceberg" of a much more horrific problem. The fact that one cadaver can be dismembered and sold in parts for over $200,000 to the pharmaceutical and medical industries has resulted in an underground network of sleazy body part traders who utilize university medical centers as "fronts" for their macabre business. Also, the underground trade in transplantable tissues and organs has now become a multi-billion per year business resulting in widespread horrors that includes the kidnapping of homeless children, for their transplantable tissues and organs, along the US/Mexico border and the forced removal of organs from prisoners in third world countries for sale in the USA.

 

The investigation of the UCLA Medical Center is presently focused in finding out who was involved, over a period of six years, in profiting in the sale of body parts. Arrested, along with UCLA's Henry Reid, was Ernest Nelson, a body parts dealer who says he paid Reid over $700,000 for permission to go into the UCLA body freezer and hack about 800 cadavers into pieces to take their parts. The cadavers were supposed to be used exclusively by medical students for study. Ernest Nelson has provided documentation to authorities that proves that high level UCLA administrators had knowledge of the clandestine sale of body parts and approved it.

 

It now appears that Henry Reid, two other employees under his supervision, and others at the UCLA Medical Center got away with trafficking in body parts by keeping some of the donated cadavers off the books. Henry Reid and the others may have been accepting cadavers that they never recorded. These practices brings to mind some frightening scenarios. There has been widespread reports of homeless persons mysteriously disappearing from the Los Angeles downtown "Skid Row" area that is not very far from UCLA. With bodies bringing in as much as $200,000 dollars, who is to say that an underground "Cadaver Mafia" is not in operation and is kidnapping and murdering these anonymous persons in order to sell their cadavers to medical centers such as the one at UCLA. Worst of all, there have been mysterious disappearances of UCLA students as well. One case involved the disappearance of freshman Michael Negrete from the Dykstra Hall campus dormitory on December 10, 1999. Michael Negrete's body has never been found.

 

The sale of body parts from cadavers is a very lucrative clandestine business and is growing yearly. The pharmaceutical and medical industries pay big bucks for everything from skin, scalps, fingernails, tendons, heart valves, skulls and bones that they use for research and for making medicines and for replacement surgery. Companies that make medical instrument conduct training seminars for doctors using varied body parts. Johnson & Johnson, has so far, been the only pharmaceutical company named in court documents of contracting with body parts dealer Ernest Nelson for human tissue samples.

 

More nefarious than utilizing University of California Medical Centers to "launder" cadaver parts obtained clandestinely, are the many underground clinics that are performing transplants of organs illegally obtained. Many of these organs are extracted from kidnapped Mexican children along the US/Mexico border and transplanted to wealthy USA patients in clinics in Tijuana, Cd. Juarez and Laredo. La Voz de Aztlan has an extensive report titled "THE CORRUPTIVE INFLUENCE OF THE DOLLAR: The Shameful Trade in Mexican Baby Organs!" at http://www.aztlan.net/organs.htm concerning the problem.

 

The horrific trade in human organs was also exposed in a 2003 film titled "Dirty Pretty Things". The film staring Audrey Tautou and directed by Stephen Frears is a socially-conscious thriller that provides a glimpse into the "the people you do not see": the clandestine world of illegal immigrants and the traffickers in organ sales that exploit their desperation for profit. According to promoters of the film, "An estimated 15,000 illegal organ transplants have been performed worldwide in recent years, usually involving wealthy Westerners and the Third World's marginalized poor who sell their organs, most often kidneys, to stay alive. The fact that many countries have banned the sale of organs only means it has gone "underground" and is now controlled by "Organ Mafias".

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I don't see why my knowing someone would change the reality of the large organ trade market.

 

Which is over-regulated, I might add.

 

No joke. The spin has been that congress was wrong to ban organ sales.

 

Ah I knew there was a libertarian inside you somewhere! Come on out of the closet J_B.

 

 

So 26 million teens in the US - give or take.

 

lets assume that eahc organ was at least worth 3,000

 

thats a potential market of $78,000,000,000 and it's a renewable resource! A new crop of teens is always on the way. Plus they spend their cash! 0% propensity to save! No need for QE3

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Poor people selling organs for food has been in the new quite a bit. This one is interesting because there was no pressing need.

 

it is "less interesting" when they HAVE TO sell organs to feed themselves? I don't think so.

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Which is over-regulated, I might add.

 

No joke. The spin has been that congress was wrong to ban organ sales.

 

Ah I knew there was a libertarian inside you somewhere! Come on out of the closet J_B.

 

Banning organ sales seems necessary, and you wouldn't recognize liberty if it poked you in the eye.

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That cracked me up! BTW, when I was that kids age I'd have rented my organ out to willing females. As a parent, I can only hope my kids are smarter than this....but I have some doubt of course.

 

Full story for posterity:

 

"A teenager in Huaishan, Anhui Province has sold one of his kidneys to buy an iPad2 tablet computer, as reported by SZTV on June 1.

 

The 17-year-old man surnamed Zheng, a freshman in high school, got connected with a kidney-selling agent through the internet, who pledged to pay him 20,000 yuan ($3,084.45 ) for one of his kidneys.

 

On April 28 of this year, Zheng went to Chenzhou, Hunan Province to have his kidney removed under the supervision of three so-called middlemen, and received 22,000 yuan ($3,392.97). Then he returned home with a laptop and an iPhone.

 

Zheng's mother discovered her son's new electronic products and forced him to reveal how he came to afford them. Then she took Zheng to Chenzhou and reported the matter to local police. The three agents' telephones have not been answered since that time.

 

Chenzhou 198 Hospital, where Zheng had his surgery, has no qualifications for kidney transplantation, according to SZTV reporters.

 

The hospital has denied any connection with the kidney removal operation, and has said that its urology department is contracted to a businessman in Fujian."

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