Trafficking of Human Body Parts: Serbia

I found this really insanely scary article in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com) from only a year ago about illegal body part trafficking. It details the Europeans facing "grinding poverty" who are seeking to sell their kidneys, lungs, bone marrow, and cornea among many other parts for cash.

(www1.american.edu)

The Internet provides a platform for this black-market. The asking price for a lung, for example, will pull you in around $250,000. Unfortunately, there is a lot of fraud within this system, as you can probably already imagine. There are two sides of this coin: the wealthy but sick, and the desperately poor. People will either falsify information, or not come through on their end of the deal. 

(www.vaseljenska.com)

The World Health Organization estimates that only 10% of the global need for organ transplants are being met. The Serbian Government tries to deter people from selling their organs by making it punishable by up to 10 years in prison. People still do it because the unemployment rate is 50% in places like Doljevac, Serbia. All you need is the Internet to advertise online and people email you a bid on one of your organs. Blood type O is especially valuable because it can be universally donated. Experts say that these illegal organ sales are very difficult to track so prosecutions are slim to none.  Police officials say not a single case of organ trafficking in Serbia has been prosecuted in the past 10 years! However, there have been a few attempts at stopping this crime ring (but none that will eradicate the root cause of this issue; unemployment and poverty). Last year in May, the Israeli police detained 10 people in control of a suspected organ trafficking ring. (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow)