Transplant Brokers in Israel Lure Desperate Kidney Patients to Costa Rica

I invite you to read this article about a recently exposed organ seller ring in Israel/ Costa Rica. Organ transplants are lifesaving operations that in reality very few of the ones that need them can get them, only 10% of the need is covered worldwide. Kidneys is one of the most transplanted organs as it can be performed from live donors, this has led to a market in the developing world where people sell their kidneys for relative small amounts of money. Also in 3rd world countries medical procedures are performed at a fraction of the cost in the developed world.

You may think you risk your life at a butcher shop to get the transplant done in south America but in reality the facilities where this business are conducted are rival to first world hospitals, private facilities too expensive to locals but almost free to foreigners compared to the cost in their own country.

Brazil is one place where this business is big, there are apparently entire towns with adults only having one kidney for selling them from 6000 to 10k dollars not much for many, but years of pay for most in those countries, its not risk free as this Chinese student sells kidney for iPad died in the process.

It appears the recipients of the organs are not evenly distributed as places with religious concerns towards the treatment of the deceased decrease the local availability of organs.

RAMAT GAN, Israel — Aside from the six-figure price tag, what was striking was just how easy it was for Ophira Dorin to buy a kidney.

Two years ago, as she faced the dispiriting prospect of spending years on dialysis, Ms. Dorin set out to find an organ broker who could help her bypass Israel’s lengthy transplant wait list. Only 36, she had a promising job at a software company and dreams of building a family. To a woman who raced cars for kicks, it seemed unthinkable that her best days might be tethered to a soul-sapping machine.

A broker who trades in human organs might seem a difficult thing to find. But Ms. Dorin’s mother began making inquiries around the hospital where she worked, and in short order the family came up with three names: Avigad Sandler, a former insurance agent long suspected of trafficking; Boris Volfman, a young Ukrainian émigré and Sandler protégé; and Yaacov Dayan, a wily businessman with interests in real estate and marketing.

analysis of major trafficking cases since 2000 suggests that Israelis have played a disproportionate role. That is in part because of religious strictures regarding death and desecration that have kept deceased donation rates so low that some patients feel they must turn elsewhere.

The Costa Rican government is not sure how many foreigners received suspicious transplants there. But The Times identified 11 patients — six Israelis, three Greeks and two American residents — who traveled to San José for transplants using kidneys obtained from locals. Two other Israelis who were located brought donors from Israel with them for procedures that most likely would not have been approved in their own country.
A meeting was arranged with Mr. Dayan, who explained that a transplant in Costa Rica would cost $175,000, Ms. Dorin said. He was careful not to specify that the package would include a kidney. “But it was understood,” Ms. Dorin recalled, “that the payment was for everything, including the organ.”
She said that some of the money was wired to a hospital in San José, and that she delivered a payment to Dr. Francisco José Mora Palma, the kidney specialist who oversaw her transplant. Dr. Mora then paid the equivalent of $18,500 to an unemployed 37-year-old man for his kidney, according to a confidential Costa Rican court document.

Read the very long, but interesting investigation article from the NYtimes, this operations does not happen in shady shags in the middle of the jungle


Transplant Brokers in Israel Lure Desperate Kidney Patients to Costa Rica

All this is illegal but if you have the money to save your live would you not do it? Its sad that people get to be so desperate they are willing to get butchered for cents…

The black market seems like a great idea when you want to buy a purse or something way on sale. The truth is many people die daily due to this market.

Its scary. We created this, with the terrible way transplants are being run. I myself had the thought that the Asian blood type craze was a cover up for someone shopping much more easily.

If I needed a new kidney I know where I'm off to

I just hope they can find a way of using 3D printing to clone human kidneys. Imagine how that would improve things.