In 2007. the World Health Organization estimated that 10% of all transplants involved patients from developed countries traveling to poor countries to buy organs. They depended on local agents who “sourced” kidneys and arranged the transplant. At least 15,000 kidneys are believed to be trafficked in this way each year. While there is evidence of people being forcibly deprived of a kidney, clearly most “donors” are people in desperate need for money. Top transplant surgeons are collaborating with criminal organ trafficking networks to target the desperate, according to Organs Watch, an academic research project at the University of California, Berkeley. __
