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The New Jersey corruption scandal that resulted in the arrests of several rabbis and politicians yesterday includes the illegal trade of human organs. Some of the live donors were citizens of Israel. Anchor Katy Clark finds out more from Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.
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KATY CLARK: Israel features in a big and grisly story out of New Jersey right now. It’s part of that corruption scandal that resulted in the arrests of several rabbis and politicians yesterday. The part we’re going to focus on involves the illegal trade of human organs. Federal investigators arrested a Brooklyn man who allegedly bought and sold human kidneys for transplant. Some of the live donors were citizens of Israel. Arthur Caplan is co-chair of the UN task force on human trafficking. He’s in Philadelphia. Professor Caplan, human trafficking is a modern horror story and at least the stuff of urban horror stories, but we normally associate it with poor countries in Eastern Europe. This story involves the United States and Israel. Should we be surprised?
ARTHUR CAPLAN: I’m a little surprised. I thought that American transplant centers are pretty big risk and pretty tough in trying to screen people who show up here from long distances and say that they want to altruistically donate a kidney, when in fact they’re simply there because they’re trying to sell a kidney. And I do think actually most American centers do try hard, but it clearly has come here. It has touched other wealthy countries – Hong Kong, some of the wealthy hospitals in China, poor people from around the world have been shipped – trafficked if you will – to wealthy countries where wealthy people get their kidneys. So it is a kind of transfer, if you will, from the very poor to the very rich.
CLARK: What do you know about illegal organ trafficking in Israel? Does Israel have any particular problem with this?
CAPLAN: Not particularly in Israel. Israel has had, if you will, some people who have come there for transplants when poor people from other countries have been trafficked there to get organs. We know that that’s happened sometimes. I haven’t heard of a situation where poor Israelis have gone out of the country to try and sell a kidney. That’s a first to me, and I track this pretty closely. So I’m not sure Israel would be anymore at the center of the organ trafficking world than India or Egypt or even Europe, but it’s a little surprising to hear that recruitment went on there and people were brought here.
CLARK: I’ve seen on researcher describe kidneys as the new blood diamonds, meaning there’s an enormous amount of money in illegal trade. Is that because there simply aren’t enough legal kidneys for transplant available?
CAPLAN: Well, shortage definitely does drive this underground market. It’s also the case that the middlemen have a field day making a ton of money. The desperately poor really do get exploited. Part of my opposition to this – I’m so ethically repulsed by people trading an organ this way is that it’s the poorest of the poor who wind up doing the sales. And they’re so badly off that all they can think of to do is sell a child, sell a kidney, or they sell themselves into prostitution. There are all forms of trafficking people, and I think what we have to be careful about is not to say, “Look. People can choose. They make a decision. They get paid.” That’s not the real world works.
CLARK: What do you do to stop this, though? Not just in the US, but in all these other countries that are currently involved?
CAPLAN: You know, there is basically three things that we have to do. One, we have to make this a priority both for police both in each individual country and for Interpol. Secondly, we have to discourage people from transplant tourism. You hear somebody say, ‘Well, I’m going to go to Hong Kong, or I’m going to go to Saudi Arabia, and I’m going to get this procedure done.” What they’re really telling you is they’re going to buy a kidney from some desperately poor person. That isn’t something we should be encouraging, even though these are people who don’t want to wait for organs – and here they might not get one – that going to this system is a way out. Last, every transplant center should be held accountable and responsible for knowing where the organ came from they’re going to transplant. They do that, they’re going to be very vigorous in making sure they know the person came because they really wanted to help someone, or they came because they’re desperately poor and they’re trying to sell their way out of poverty.
CLARK: Arthur Caplan directs the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. Thank you so much for speaking to us.
CAPLAN: My pleasure.
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