Black Market Organ Harvesting: Is it Truly Inevitable?

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When there is a product, there is a black market for that product. This is true with drugs, seafood, electronics, art, jewelry, music, designer clothing, and more. This is also true for human tissue and bodily fluids. Human tissues are a product in high demand with little supply. People ask if there is a way to stop this. There is not. The black market trade in organs, bones, blood, and plasma is inevitable due to the ambiguity surrounding organ donation and transplant laws, a shortage of organ donors, and the lucrative nature of selling human tissues.
"Law and economics recognize three types of markets with varying degrees of legality: white, gray, and black. The trade in human flesh has evolved into its own category of commercial activity, what you might call the ‘red market’ — a market whose economic characteristics are complicated by the fact that customers owe their lives and family relationships to the supply chain, yet know perilously little about it (Carney)." In some instances, which have been prosecuted, foreigners were lured to other countries and promised money for their kidneys. They never received their compensation (Carvajal). In one instance, some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army executed Serbian prisoners and sent their organs to Istanbul, Turkey to be given to Turkish patients.
Religion has played a large part in preventing the organ transplant legislation, as the people have been arguing that humans "cannot sell or donate what [they] do not own" (McGrath). These people are operating under the assumption that a person’s body does not belong to him or her, but to God (McGrath)."By contrast, Sayed Tantawi, Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Egypt's highest Islamic authority, has declared that donating one's organs af...

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McGrath, Cam. "EGYPT: MOVE TO CURB BOOMING TRADE IN HUMAN ORGANS." Interpress Service 18 May 2009: n. pag. InfoTrac Student Edition. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. .
Teresi, Dick. The undead: organ harvesting, the ice-water test, beating-heart cadavers : how medicine is blurring the line between life and death. New York: Pantheon Books, 2012. Print.

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