Kidney Selling

When Policy and Needs Diverge: The Illegal Kidney Market in India

The wave of medical technology that has arisen throughout the West in the past century has served to greatly enhance quality of life and health standards in western society. It is noteworthy, however, that the western nations in which these technologies were developed, did not at the same time have immense problems with poverty, healthcare, education, and basic infrastructure. When these modern medical procedures hit the shores of third world countries—nations that are struggling to build cohesive governments and address basic concerns of survival—the results are anything but predictable. Indeed, extreme conditions provide an ideal environment for abuse of these medical innovations.

A key example of this phenomenon is the problem of rampant illegal organ selling in modern day India, a nation overcome by problems of infrastructure and poverty. As the technology of organ transplants suddenly hit urban areas in India during the late 1970’s, it soon became clear that administrators, doctors, and impoverished patients were anything but prepared for the implications of such a procedure, namely the possibility of organ selling. The Voluntary Health Association of India estimates that each year more than 2,000 people, mostly the urban poor, sell their organs for money, not including those that are paid to travel and donate abroad (Chandra 53). The U.N. Human Rights Commission said in a 1993 report that more kidneys were sold in India than any other nation in the world (Organs Watch Online, TED Case Studies). The consequences of the kidney selling market are a cause of great concern, not only because of their unethical nature, but because of their harmful public health implications such as increased HIV transmission during operations done on many of the infected poor. Ironically, this medical technology meant to advance and save human lives has been abused to such lengths, that in...