We've all heard of the man who wakes in an ice-filled bath with a fresh scar around his side and a note thanking him for a kidney . . . Don't worry about him. He's just a legend. Worry, instead, about the real victims of organ theft. Because for them, awakening never comes. The need for organs is high, and wherever there is a demand someone somewhere will profit by it.
Every year thousands die because they could not receive the organ transplants they desperately needed to stay alive. Waiting lists for organs are impossibly long, and many die before ever seeing their name at the top.
But, for those who can afford it, there is an alternative to the wait that may end in death. The sale of human body parts is big business, and for the right price the more sinister side of the international medical community will supply you with the organs you need, even if they have to steal them.
To the unscrupulous in massive population nations such as China and India, body parts are often worth much more than the lives of their owners. Two Chinese men were arrested last year in New York when they attempted to sell human organs to undercover FBI agents. Wang Chengyong (42), a former prosecutor on Hainan Island in southern China, and Fu Xingqi (36) were caught in an FBI sting after Chengyong approached a dialysis centre in New York City trying to sell human body parts. Chengyong signed contracts with undercover FBI agents posing as administrators of the dialysis centre for the sale of kidneys harvested from executed Chinese prisoners.
Fu was released on $150,000 bail. His lawyer said he was simply the owner of a New York Chinese laundry and had been used as a translator. Chengyong was held without bail.
The entire case was troubled, with US-China State Department relations problems, and was finally dropped in March, when a witness refused to testify and fled to China. "We estimate there are about 6,000 prisoners executed in China each year," according to William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International, USA. "About 90 per cent of transplanted kidneys come from these executed prisoners." Bodies and the organs they contain are confiscated upon execution in China. Chengyong assured agents he could guarantee lungs from non-smokers. Prisoners' executions are tailored to organ transplant needs: a bullet in the head for kidneys, lungs, livers or hearts; a bullet in the chest for corneas. Up to $5,000 will be paid for corneas; $20,000 for kidneys and $40,000 for livers, in addition to $40,000 for the transplant operation.
Near New Dehli, three leading Indian transplant surgeons, the owner of the Noida Medicare Centre (a hospital famed for transplants), and six others were arrested after a mechanic complained he'd been drugged and robbed of a kidney during a routine medical examination. Indian police say stolen kidneys are being sold for between $6,000 to $10,000.
In Bangalore, 80 Indians showed police kidney transplant scars and claimed they were robbed. Police maintain most actually sold their kidneys for $1,000 - more than a year's salary for an Indian labourer - and are now seeking more money through court cases.
In Russia, bodies of the dead are owned by the government and must be turned over immediately to authorities. Gruesome pictures have surfaced showing tables full of stacked nude bodies of men and women that can be picked over for body parts.
In London, Dr Raymond Crockett, a Harley Street physician who also practised at the National Kidney Centre, was struck off the medical register following an investigation into transplant operations in which kidneys were removed from Turkish donors who had been brought to London and paid for their organs.
These are the cases we know of. But most organ theft stories are simply rumours - like the man in the ice-filled bath. Les Olson, director of procurement for the University of Miami Transplant Programme, points out: "To harvest an organ takes two transplant co-ordinators, two surgeons, a nursing team and an anaesthesiologist. The idea that someone could do this on their own in the bathroom of a hotel is pure fantasy."
Organ theft myths go back a long way. In 1768 the family of a deformed French prince in Lyon was rumoured to be kidnapping children and removing their arms to replace their son's withered limb. More recently there has been talk of a little boy lost in France's EuroDisney in the morning and recovered in the evening minus a kidney. Surgeons scoff at these stories but they have sinister origins.
In 1986 the Soviet newspaper, Pravda, in a KGB propaganda campaign, spread stories of children being adopted in Latin America and taken to the US where they were murdered for their organs. These rumours were continued in Guatemala by the country's largest daily newspaper, La Prensa Libre, which kept alive the organ theft hysteria long after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Organ theft has so disturbed the international community that the European parliament has passed resolutions condemning organ traffic. The resolution was based on a report by Leon Schwartzenberg, former French minister of public health, who warned of a homicidal organ mafia.
Nobody denies that in some countries such as Brazil, India, and Egypt, poor people do sell their organs. And in America a woman advertised her kidney for sale in the newspaper to pay for medical fees after having a gall bladder operation.
Doctors admit organs are stolen from bodies, but lurid tales of travellers who are drugged and later awake to find an organ missing are almost definitely false. Why would anyone allow a forced donor to wake up and possibly be a witness against them? And if a doctor did steal organs off the street, he would be endangering his recipients because of mismatching and disease.
people laugh at organ theft myths, but hysteria generated by these stories can lead to violence and death. In Guatemala a crowd accused 37-year-old American tourist Melissa Larson of stealing children for their organs. Police took her into protective custody. The mob burned down the police station and set fire to 10 cars. It took 500 riot police, army reinforcements and armoured cars to restore the peace.
One month later American June Weinstock (51) was taking photos of Guatemalan children during an Easter celebration in rural San Christabal when an eight-year-old boy wandered off. Gripped by organ theft hysteria, a mob pulled Weinstock off a bus and took her to a police station. Five hours later the mob broke down the doors, severely beat her, and left her for dead with eight stab wounds, two broken arms, and a fractured skull.
Wild stories of child organ harvesting have severely hindered international adoptions. Turkey has outlawed adoptions of its children to foreigners. Columbia now demands mothers putting their children up for adoption to undergo expensive DNA testing to prove their parentage.
People may or may not be murdered for their organs. But thousands are dying worldwide because the gruesome tales are giving legitimate transplant programmes a bad name.