“Okay, this happened to my niece’s, uncle’s, son’s, daughter’s, brother named Bob, okay? One day in New York, when Bob was going to school, walking alone, he was attacked! This shifty group chloroformed him and then no one saw Bob for two weeks. After two weeks, someone found his body – in a trash can with all of its vital organs, including the eyes, taken out. Although no one knows where the group who did this is, people do know that over the span of these two weeks, some rich tourists came to New York, stayed for a day, and these rich tourists – who had health problems when coming in – were suddenly cured of their ailments.” This is a typical urban legend. The urban legend here deals with a certain issue that is quite eerie – the human organ black market. This market is underground and some hospitals, even in the US, participate in this trade. Today, this trade is illegal, and rightly so.
Many know that when there is a demand for a product, it gets more and more difficult to supply that product, especially when the supply is low. This is also true of organs. Many hospitals often struggle to fill the large demand for organs when trying to do organ transplants. Some bright folks, at some point in the past, recognized this large demand and realized the huge profit to be made. Thus, the black market for human organs started.
The market is actually a very simple one. It is comprised of consumers, sellers, and brokers. The brokers, who receive most of the money from the consumers, are the ones who round up the “sellers.” Sellers are people who are willing to sell a part of their body in exchange for a gift such as a car, or a sum of money. Brokers pay these gifts to the seller, and after taking the organs (with a surgeon’s or doctor’s help), sell them to the consumers who need an organ and are willing to pay for it. The brokers then receive money from the consumers, and use this money to get or round up more sellers. The cycle goes on and on and on and on.
The practices that these brokers are involved in are questionable at best. I mean, these people are selling organs and gaining them the way any store does with its products. The fact that these people are trying to profit off of something such as human organs is disgusting. Some may say, “Hey, it saves lives though by filling the supply,” and although this may be partly true, one must know first that the black market is very expensive. Thus, only rich people would have access to these organs, and this is not helping the population as a whole or majority. The black market does not compensate for the millions in need of organs. However, no matter how disgusting it may be, there are some up sides besides the saving of a small part of the population’s lives. One of the pros about the black market would be how its brokers provide money to the sellers, in exchange for the human appendage. For example, a woman from America was trying to sell one of her organs in order to be able to buy new dentures. The money and rewards from selling one’s body parts may help one acquire certain necessities of life – especially helping those in the slums who know how to use money intelligently.
The practice of organ selling is vile and very shady business. Unlike the hero of the movie <i>Seven Pounds</i>, which stars Will Smith, not everyone is giving their organs to other people in order to change their lives. People normally give out their organs in the black market in order to buy something for themselves – whether good or bad, one can never be sure. But, instead of selling one’s body parts that could potentially save someone else’s life for money, one should really question why they are going to give away their organs – for good reasons or for selfish ones? While one meditates on this question, one should go watch <i>Seven Pounds</i>, and rethink the practice of selling organs.