In a world where morality is often nothing but a figment of our imagination, the 10 black market organ trade and trafficking facts, statistics, and stories will chill you to the bone. The organ trade industry is one of the most terrifying illegal enterprises with a global presence. While you might have heard a story of a person being drugged after a night out and waking up without a kidney, such a story barely ever happens. That does not mean that what actually happens is any less horrifying.
According to the United Nations, there are three common scenarios for organ trade on the black market. The first one is intrinsically linked to the human trafficking trade, and you can learn more about that illegal criminal organization in 16 Statistics About Human Trafficking in the United States. In this situation, the people who are being trafficked are forced by the traffickers to part with their organs without any compensation, while on other occasions, the trafficker employs deceit to achieve their purposes. In the second situation, people who are in dire need of money and have no other methods to obtain cash promise to part with their kidney or a part of their liver for a large sum of cash, but are often underpaid. In the last and probably the most horrific situation, people who suffer from an unrelated ailment are deceived by their doctors who instead, harvest their organs and sell them on the black market. In some cases, the ailment doesn’t even exist!
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This despicable practice is a multi-billion dollar industry. In America alone, over an 118,000 people are on the transplant list, with most being unable to gain access due to the lack of donors available. Unfortunately, organ donors are in short supply as many people are still unwilling to donate their organs after their death. Religion may play a part in this as well, as some followers of Islam believe that their religion does not allow the donation of organs, as apparently, that is against God’s will, which I as a Muslim completely disagree with.
While this industry is especially prevalent in the poorer countries, it has a strong presence even in the United States. While the sale of organs has been banned since 1984 in the US, it took 27 years for the first person to be convicted of trafficking organs! If we seriously want to eradicate this crime industry, public awareness is the first step we need to take. With that in mind, here are 10 black market organ trade and trafficking facts, statistics and stories. So, let’s read all those black market organ trade and trafficking facts, statistics, and stories that are waiting us below.
