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Medical tourism, illegal donors pose dilemmas
While it is illegal for an individual to sell his or her organs to transplant recipients in the United States and in most other countries, experts indicate the selling of organs is widespread in certain developing countries.
Some of those organs make their way to the Unites States, those involved in research and transplantation medical care say.
The practice of medical tourism -- or patients on the transplant waiting list in the U.S. going abroad to essentially purchase organs, often from financially desperate donors -- has become more common as the supply of available organs for transplant outstrips the supply.
Alternatively, donors who are willing to sell organs sometimes come to the United States for transplant in this country.
"I would say it is clearly not legal to do so in the United States -- that's clear," says Ann Mongoven , PhD, MPH, of the Center for Ethics and the Humanities in Life Sciences at Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI. "The question about whether it happens in the Unites States, I think, is a more open question. We certainly know of cases where it did. And the question, then is: How widespread is that? It's very hard to know, because it's illegal. So, it's hard to track.
"I think in many of the cases we're aware of, someone was brought in from overseas, and in order to provide an organ, they were posed as a relation or friend of the recipient but actually were there on a paid basis."
The organization she credits with having done the greatest amount of tracking of illegal practices in organ donation is Organ Watch, headed by medical anthropologist Nancy Scheper Hughes, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. But proof is hard to come by.
Some who spoke to MEA told of transplant centers being "hoodwinked" by individuals who came to this country specifically to sell an organ. Mongoven says one such donor from Israel even made a documentary of his experience titled "Kidney Beans."
"Because they are posing themselves as a personal supporter or friend of the recipient . . . this is why, in some instances, it can, in fact, be difficult for a transplant center to...