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Organ harvesting is the practice of stealing people's organs via surgery while they are under the influence of drugs, or once the person is dead, when the organs can be illicitly removed and then used for further purposes such as transplants or sold on the black market. The earliest recorded examples of organ theft were a series of killings for cadavers for use in medical schools, the Burke and Hare murders in Edinburgh in 1828 and the copycat London burkers in London in 1831.

A main reason for organ harvesting is to do with the extreme difficulty with which organs can be preserved postmortem, usually requiring a braindead but still functionally alive patient, and the long waiting lists for available organs. There has never been sufficient evidence to suggest that the practice has ever occurred on an organized basis: the practice is occasionally advanced as a theory into mysterious disappearances or murders, and is then advanced by sensationalist news reports, followed by word-of-mouth promotion as an urban legend in which the practice is linked with a nefarious underground network of organised crime, and also promoted in horror movies and thriller movies. The United Nations Council of Europe has released a detailed study of the fact and the fictions surrounding organ theft.

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Organ theft events

Organ harvesting being a general fiction, however, has not stopped some real-world entities from some larger orgnisations and governments from pursuing the practice for political or tactical reasons. In The Hunt: Me and War criminals, Carla Del Ponte claims that Kosovo Albanians smuggled human organs of kidnapped Serbs after the Kosovo war ended in 1999. The EU rule-of-law mission uncovered no evidence to back these claims up while no evidence was presented by the Serbian government.

It has been confirmed by news sources that the organs of a number of death row prisoners in China were, at least at one point, taken for transplant after their executions, on a for-profit basis, for both foreign nationals and Chinese nationals; it was unclear whether the prisoners had given their permission to have their organs harvested after death. The Chinese justice system is alleged to work very quickly for those sentenced to death, not allowing significant time for appeals, which then led to allegations that the entire justice system has been corrupted by a government approved system of organ theft. Until 2006 the Chinese government did not have a specific law in place outlawing the acquisition of organs without express consent; now such a law exists, but even with this new statute, other conflicting statutes remain, such as that which allows Chinese state prisons to use prisoners in whatever way that prison deems beneficial to the State. Meanwhile, in July 2006, former Canadian Secretary of State David Kilgour and Human Rights Lawyer David Matas published a controversial report concluding that "...large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners are victims of systematic organ harvesting, whilst still alive..." .

In December 2009, Israel admitted that, in the 1980s and 1990s, there had been organ harvesting of skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from dead bodies of Israeli soldiers, citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers at the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute without the permission from relatives. The revelation was a consequence of the Aftonbladet-Israel controversy. Israel states that the institute in question ended such practice sometime around the year 2000.

On the 6th of august the Ukraine police arrested some israelis in Ukraine for selling human organs.

Organ sale

Although illegal in most countries, the sale of organs is common. Accurate statistics are hard to come by, but in March 2007, one estimate was that 5 to 10% of the world's kidney transplants involved compensation. Although many reports that this trade has involved coercion or kidnapping (thus becoming organ theft) have turned out to be just rumors, some cases have involved theft, for example the 2008 kidney ring run by doctor Amit Kumar in India. Another example is from Brazil, where a woman had a routine ovarian cyst surgery but later realized that one of her kidneys had disappeared during her operation. This had occurred without her knowledge when she realized after she went for a checkup at a different location than the hospital that she had her surgery. The hospital refused to provide her with any information or justification for her organ theft that had taken place during her surgery. These types of routine acts of theft are done for organ trafficking that can be later sold to the highest bid.

Examples in fiction

• Organlegging (a reference to bootlegging) is a theme in several of Larry Niven's Known Space series.

• The post-apocalyptic film Repo! The Genetic Opera deals with the concept of organ theft being legalized, where assassins known as Repo men kill people for their organs when they fail to keep up with the payment of the organs they had purchased.

• In the Waita Uziga one shot eroguro manga, "Material" and its sequel "Calling You" tells about two corrupt teachers who capture teenage girls and use their bodies for the purpose of organ trafficking or to sell them as sex slaves. The victims themselves are often turned into objects (ie. a pillow or a toilet) by having parts of their body removed before being sold on the black market. The protagonist Izumi has her limbs amputated and is sold on the black market as a "flesh pillow"

• The film Repomen tells the story of organ theft being legalized, but has artificial organs in place of natural ones being taken should they fail to keep up with their payments.

• The manga series Deadman Wonderland depicts prisoners being farmed for organs depending upon the results of a twisted slot machine, which is used for the purpose of removing an organ or body part (ie. heart, eyes, etc.) from an individual should they lose one of the matches that occur at the titular theme park.

• In the film Crank: High Voltage, the protagonist is subjected to organ theft by having his heart removed and he goes on a path of vengeance against those who stole his heart and replaced it with an artificial one.

• The flash cartoon series Charlie the unicorn depicts the protagonist having his kidney stolen by the two unicorns who convince him to go on adventures with him, much to Charlie's chagrin.

• The music video for the song "I'm Only Human Sometimes" on the William Control album, Noir (William Control album)wsNoir, is about organ theft. The video's plot follows William through a night on the town during which he meets two attractive women that drug him, seemingly sexually assault him, and remove what appears to be one of his kidneys. He wakes up the next morning crudely stitched up in the bath tub of a motel room, visibly in pain, and holding a note that advises him to call 9-1-1.

See also

• Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH)
• Human Tissue Authority
• Organ transplant
• Shichinin no Tomurai (Japanese dark comedy film which deals with organized organ theft)
• Aftonbladet-Israel controversy
• Yehuda Hiss

References

1. The Worlds of Burke and Hare date accessed: 14 December 2009.
2. Trafficking in organs, tissues, and cells and trafficking in human beings for the purpose of the removal of organs date accessed: 14 December 2009.
3. Marzouk, Lawrence (7 May 2010). "EULEX Uncovers No Evidence KLA Trafficked Organs". Balkan Insight. Retrieved 8 May 2010.
4. BBC News - Organ sales 'thriving' in China 27/09/06
5. David Matas and David Kilgour (31 January 2007), An Independent Investigation into Allegations of organ Harvesting of Falun gong practitioners in china
6. Israel harvested organs without permission, officials say, CNN
7. Black, Ian (2009-12-21). "Doctor admits Israeli pathologists harvested organs without consent". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 2010-05-20.
8. Aftonbladet: Israel tog organ – utan tillstånd
9. http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=183889
10. International Summit On Transplant Tourism And Organ Trafficking (2008), "The Declaration of Istanbul on Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism", Clinical journal of the American Society of Nephrology : CJASN, 3 (5): 1227–31, doi:10.2215/CJN.03320708, ISSN 1555-9041, PMID 18701611 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
11. Nullis-Kapp Clare (2004 September), "Organ trafficking and transplantation pose new challenges", Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 82 (9): 715, PMC 2622992 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
12. Kumar, S. (2003), "Police uncover large scale organ trafficking in Punjab", BMJ, 326: 180b, doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7382.180/b, PMC 1125055, PMID 12543823
13. Budiani-Saberi, Da; Delmonico, Fl (2008), "Organ trafficking and transplant tourism: a commentary on the global realities.", American journal of transplantation, 8 (5): 925–9, doi:10.1111/j.1600-6143.2008.02200.x, ISSN 1600-6135, PMID 18416734 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
14. Jeneen Interlandi (Jan 19, 2009), "Not Just Urban Legend", Newsweek
15. Sara Sidner and Tess Eastment (January 29, 2008), "Police hunt for doctor in kidney-snatching ring", CNN
16. [Scheper-Hughes, N. 2002.The Ends of the Body: Commodity Fetishism and the Global Traffic in Organs. SAIS Reviewvol. XXII no. 1, 61-80.

Further reading

• Marie-Monique Robin, Voleurs d'yeux (1995 Albert Londres Award)
• Joel Bast, How Claims Spread: Cross-National Diffusion of Social Problems, chapter: The Diffusion of Organ Theft Narratives
• Michael Parmly, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Hearing Before the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights Washington, DC June 27, 2001
• Police Hunt for Doctor in Kidney-Snatching Ring CNN, January 29, 2008
• BBC News - Sellafield organ removal inquiry 18/04/2007
• The Epoch Times - New Witness Confirms Existence of Chinese Concentration Camp, Says Organs Removed from Live Victims
• CNN.com Law Center - UCLA suspends its Willed Body Program 09/03/2004
• Illegal Organ Trafficking Poses A Global Problem by The Huffington Post, July 24, 2009
• Tissue and Organ Harvesting, OMNI, omni.ac.uk

• Crimes
• Organ trafficking