THE illegal kidney donor scandal that has broken in India demonstrates the unpleasant truth that when survival is concerned, wealthy sick people, largely from the prosperous First World, will pay considerable sums of money for an organ transplant where the organs are “harvested” from the poor in a Third World country. This deeply objectionable trade is by no means confined to India. Similar scams have been uncovered in Turkey, China and Latin America but India has become a center of so-called “transplant tourism” because of the considerable medical expertise that exists in the country.
There are two clear issues highlighted by this scandal. The first is the morality of people who can afford it, buying kidneys from outside their family circle. Despite pharmacological advances, the transplanting of a non-blood relative’s organ carries with it a considerably higher chance of rejection by the recipient’s system. It is therefore still likely that a rich Westerner may need more than one transplant. Most of these people did not get wealthy by being stupid. They know perfectly well how tempting to a desperately poor man the offer of money for an organ will be. The thousand dollars allegedly being paid to Indian peasant donors will have seemed a princely sum whereas the well-heeled recipient might easily have spent the same sum in a restaurant with a few friends. The long-term cost to the donor and his family is of course not calculated.
However good the operation, the donor is going to have to live the rest of his life with only one of the two kidneys with which he was born. What right has any man to increase his own lifespan at the expense of another’s?
The second issue concerns doctors around the world, not just in India, who are prepared to be part of a process that bribes or cons desperately poor and ill-educated people into parting with their kidneys. Not all doctors these days swear the Hippocratic oath and promise to “Do no evil.” But such is the universal trust in the medical profession that it is simply not expected that doctors and surgeons will ever be mixed up in such cynical and greedy crimes. Medical professionals enjoy high standing in all societies. If they betray that trust, then the consequences should be relatively severe. Certainly the two years in jail faced by the Indian medics in this most recent scandal is totally inadequate.
Finally there is no limit to the amorality of this action. If doctors are prepared to engage in these crimes, why should they not do away with trickery altogether and steal organs from recently killed corpses, pretending of course not to know how the victims died.
All in all, this is a sordid and disgusting scandal that reflects grievously on both immoral doctors and their wealthy clients. In India, the Central Bureau of Investigation is launching a nationwide enquiry and ministers promise toughened laws and penalties. Both deserve to be successful.
