Definition Essay: Black Market Organ Trafficking And Sales

A huge quantity of black market cash in our present culture comes from organ trafficking and sales, including illegal organ harvesting as well. Kidneys and organs go to the largest bidder on the black market. The true beneficiaries engaged in trafficking and sales of black market organs are organ brokers. Organ brokers are greedy money hungry intermediaries who tricky the needy and the impatient. A typical black market organ donor is approximately 48 years old and earns 53,000 dollars per year. The median patient is 28 years and has $480 per annum, with average rates of 150,000 dollars for the kidney and average rates of $5,000 for customers (Nguyen, 2015, para 7). Sales of Black market organs are misleading and immoral, seeing that they benefit the rich while exploiting poor, devaluing to human life, and are dangerous to the donor and the recipient.

First of all, Black market organ sales are misleading and immortal because they favor the rich, while exploiting the poor. In 2009, Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, a man from Newmark, New Jersey was accused of operating a black-market organ transplant industry. Rosenbaum “admitted that he had brokered three illicit sales of the Israelis kidneys for $120,000 or more in exchange for US-based kidney patients in a Federal Court in New Jersey’ (Porter, 2011, para 2). In offering them $10,000, Rosenbaum took advantage of the donors, while charging them 10 times more. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, the act of exploiting someone is to ‘use them unfairly for one’s own advantage’ (Exploiting, 2019). When making minimum wage or less, there’s no questions about if they would get a few thousand bucks. When people are informed that they are going to earn cash they are also being told that they are going to save another’s lives; they are going to want to save someone and get reward, of course. But what about the things not mentioned? Think about this: a rich man needs an organ urgently. He has no chance to look out for a lengthy wait line. Realizing that there are those on the planet in financial need, the well-off person is trying to find someone who is going to swap the organ he needs for money-related salary, and he discovers him. The person he finds urgently needs cash with the aim of stabilizing his family and keeping a rooftop over his head. Due to his desperate situation, the poor man accepts his well-off proposal. The problem here is that the poor is in a hopeless situation. He will do anything he can to survive, the concept of ‘all or nothing.’ The rich man knows and is using it for his own benefit. Now, this is just a scenario, but situations like this happen throughout the black market. Not only is the recipient being exploited, but the customers are also in this situation. Tying this back to the case study of Rosenbuam, he also utilized clinics such as hopitals, ‘to believe that the donation was operating exclusively out of compassion for loved ones.’ (Porter, 2011, para 15). Hospitals did not challenge the transplant because it was life threatening and the aim of the hospital was to save people. This is a perfect instance of black market brokers deceiving others to enhance their incomes. Rosenbaum claimed that the lifesaving services for the sick and the needy were available, but why did Rosenbaum charge 10 times more than he paid for the kidney? And why did they also say that the “cash concerned was for procedural expenses, conducted in famous American clinics,’ (Porter, 2011, para 5) but Rosenbaum and his attorneys did not specify the patients ‘ title during the court. Why not mention the hospitals ‘ name to prove that your capital was not all about it? He wished to get as much reward for himself as he could. He didn’t care about the hopeless recipient and donor’s welfare. On a taped video Rosenbaum was captured stating, ‘Money had to distributed to Israeli physicians and visa preparers and those who were looking after organ donors in this nation’ (Porter, 2011, para 16) But clearly, this was not the case because he had lied to the clinics he was working in. There are multiple journal entry presentations in the June/July Letters series on the First Things page. An article captures James Smalls ‘ eyes published by Gilbert Meilaender as she talks on the topic of Black Market Organ Sales. Small’s goes to share her perspective on the article. She finds that there are ‘98,000 patients on the waiting list and only 28,000 received organs in 2007 according to the United Network on Organ Sharing.’ The question pops up as to why people don’t donate and found that it is linked to fear. She goes on to clarify that ‘Unfortunately, poor conduct in European, Thai, and American clinics continues to give credence to that fear-the fear of being under-cared for if it turns out that they are organ donors.” With that being said, some have turned to “illegal and immoral activities such as black markets, assaults, and exploitation of the poor and powerless” (Small, 2008). Organ sales create a grim, inhumane atmosphere in which the wealthy benefit the most and exploit the needy of the disadvantaged for their own gain.

Second, the sale of organs on the black market is false and immoral because it devalues human life. Now that I understand more of what organ sales is about and have done my research, I can say that the value of human life has been violated. The sale of organs, as Pope John Paul II put it, would lead to ‘an instrumental use of the body, and therefore of the person’ (Capaldi 2000, p. 142). Others become ‘wandering organ banks’ for those who need an organ and are prepared to settle for it (Lawlor, 2011, pg. 250). It devalues the value of other individuals and of their lives when individuals bring a cost toll on other individuals and their bodies or when they are treated like a instrument or object to be sold to the highest bidder. Our organs are our temples, where our hearts lie. We should look after our organs and not give them a wage test. Tolerating purchases of organs will result in those in desperate financial situations lying about wellness just for compensation. Selling organs is like buying your soul for a couple of clothes. The donation of offering is lovely, but it becomes a issue when that donation calls for reward, where cash is the only goal.

Lastly, Black market organ sales can be seen as misleading and immoral seeing that they are dangerous not only to the donor, but the recipient as well. A doctor or surgeon does not need to understand that carrying an organ is dangerously hazardous if it is not properly accomplished; after all, a portion of the flesh is separated. Risk is engaged for the recipient, because the flesh must be prepared to bring part in the organ, or the organ must suit the recipient, but there is a true risk for the donor. As Goodwin suggests, ‘Both the sellers and the purchasers of these organs are involved in a sensitive, if not harmful, method’ (Goodwin, 2001, pg. 1367). There may be important post-transplant impacts on a patient. Several instances from organ vendors around the globe require a situation in which the recipient encountered financial issues or thought that after surgery his or her fitness had decreased (Koplin, 2014, pg. 10). Most of these contributors, if not all of them, were desperately poor. Some of the locations these individuals resided were not even a healthy environment to start with, so it was not helpful to have one less kidney or some other sort of organ. For the kidney ‘it is much harder to part with a kidney if patients do not have adequate safe water or food and depend on labor-intensive labor in order to produce incomes’ Removing an organ requires knowledge, and that is not what many contributors get. To make things worse, donors don’t look for medical care or do a check up after the surgery because they don’t want others to know that they’ve lost or sold an organ because it’s illegal. It doesn’t assist to secretly or unlawfully donate an organ when interacting with such a sensitive method to see how safety risks to the donor. If the welfare of someone is at danger such as the donation of an organ, and it is still going on, then the method is unfair and should be more valuable than the prize of the method for the safety of a individual. Another cause why organ sales are immoral is the physical risk of organ sales.

Several explanations have been given as to why organ sales are inhumane, yet there are explanations why organ sales happen. Many individuals go beyond the law and engage in an illegal exchange of organs, not because they want to violate the law or be a criminal, but because they are desperate for their needs to be met with an organ. Sales of organs may be illegal, but it may be the only route that somebody can genuinely get an organ. As of 2015, there were 120,00 individuals on an organ transplant waiting roster, and only about 29,000 individuals got an organ. Almost every year, due to the absence of organs, more than ‘10,000 individuals disappear (or become too ill for a funeral) while on the waiting list’ (Elias & Lacerta & Macis, 2015). The need for organs is very serious, so if individuals have to take illegal activities like selling organs to remain healthy, they will.

In summary, human lives was devalued in New Jersey with regard to the black market organ trafficking incident. The amount of operations, i.e. people involved in the process, was spoken of as numbers only. The trade favored the rich in America while the poor in Israel were being taken advantage of. Whether the method was hazardous to the donor or receiver is difficult to understand, but if the recipients have been monitored, it is not too unlikely that they will have safety problems. According to the requirements set down, sales of organs are inhumane.