'Kidney racket' exposed in India

[NashVegas]

Source: BBC

Last week, police in Gurgaon, a suburb of the capital Delhi, raided a house which was used to carry out illegal kidney transplants.

Hundreds of poor labourers were tricked into selling kidneys, officials says.

Trade in human organs is banned in India but many continue to sell their kidneys to clients, including Westerners, waiting for transplants.

Gurgaon is an affluent suburb of Delhi, home to high-rise apartment blocks and call centres.

...
The clients are said to be wealthy Indians, and even some foreign visitors, who were in urgent need of a kidney transplant and willing to pay large sums for it.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7212596.stm

[sam sarrha]

1. hey.. i wish they'd legalize it here.. i got a spare one i'd like to sell.

[knitter4democracy]

4. Nah, you don't want to do that.

I lost my kidney due to a large tumor over a year ago, and I'm still dealing with the fallout. Big incision that takes forever to heal, ribs that take months to go back into place after being held out of the way for three hours by the strongest person in the OR, and risk of kidney failure for the one that's left.

I always wonder why the media makes it sound like it's not that big of a surgery. Granted, mine was bigger than usual (lost a pound of flesh and three inches of rib), but it's still a nasty surgery.

[pitohui]

5. because they want to guilt trip family members into donating "spare" kidneys

it's interesting to me that somebody supposedly always needs my body parts -- and yet no one needs them badly enough to want to pay for them :shrug:

[knitter4democracy]

6. I sure wouldn't want anyone in my family to be a living donor.

Not after what I went through. If my left kidney fails, I don't want my kids or anyone else being a living donor for me. I'll wait on the list, thanks.

[doodadem]

7. That's interesting........

I had donated a kidney to my diabetic sister nearly 25 years ago. The surgery was not nearly as bad for me as the pre-operation testing--in particular, the one where they open the artery on your leg and shoot in the radioactive dye. I thought my head was going to explode with that one, to the point where I tried to get off the table, and said I'm out of here. A hefty tech threw me back on the table and held me down while I screamed.

I was in great shape at the time of the surgery, running several miles daily. A week after I got home, I ran half a mile. I had to hold my hand on my left side, because you can feel your other organs sloshing around in the vacated space for awhile until they adapt, and your remaining kidney enlarges to take up the workload. They closed my scar with super glue. You're right, since I was a skinny little thing at the time, it went half way round my body. But it fades over time.

My sister exceeded all expectations with that kidney for so long. They usually only last 10 years or so. She continued to abuse the hell out of it, but it's the one thing she had that kept going strong.

Unfortunately, we lost her last year due to an arrogant new doctor's screw up. On one of her many hospital stays, this moron had them discontinue her anti-rejection medication. You have to stay on these for the rest of your life after a transplant. Within a month, the kidney started failing, and she realized what had been done. My mom checked with the hospital pharmacy later, and they confirmed it. My sister just gave up. She didn't have the heart or the stamina to be on 9 hours of dialysis every other day. She called me to tell me she was taking herself off of it, and she was ready to go. She had been so lonely for my other diabetic sister, who had died 5 years previously.

So I'm still dealing with the serious guilties, because she made me promise I would bring a lawsuit against this doctor. I'm still in the middle of this nasty neighbor lawsuit which I've posted about previously. I just don't have the energy to jump right into another one. Plus I'm 2,000 miles away from where it would have to be filed.

But I digress. No one can say what they will do for a loved one like this until they are put in the position. My other sister had several cadaver transplants, and they never worked very well. I'd have done it again, even as mad as she made me sometimes with not taking care of herself--I used to threaten to repossess!

[knitter4democracy]

8. Bless you for doing something so big, so loving, so selfless.

:hug:

Oh, and don't sue the doctor--report him to the state medical board. There are some studies now about taking people off those meds, but they do it by injecting bone marrow from the donor into the recipient, and they're still just in small trials. There was nothing like it then going on, and he killed her. He needs to lose his license, and there's a good chance he might. Chances are, your sister wasn't the only patient he has killed, so you need to report him. The state board might have only sanctioned him for something else and is just waiting for a report of something more dire to go all the way and kick him out of medicine. Most states let you look that up on a website or call their licensing board office and ask.

My hubby's a doctor, and I've always said that going after their livelihood is way better than getting their malpractice insurance to pay out. I'd report that bastard to the chief of medicine at the hospital where he has privileges and the state medical board. Don't feel guilt, though--she didn't know what you'd be going through yourself, and someday, he will get what's coming to him, which is what she wants. I'd report his ass and keep calling the chief until I knew they were going to do something (at the very, very least, a Mortality and Morbidity conference where he has to explain to the entire medical staff why he's an idiot and they roast him but good).

There is no freakin' way I could've run at all after my surgery last year. Then again, narcotics don't work on me, so I had almost no pain control at all, even when I woke up. My ten inch long incision was glued together, which was awfully nice, but he used dissolvable stitches further down that are still working their way to the surface. That's annoying. After having an exploratory laparoscopy just seven months before the kidney surgery, my body's been through the wringer, and I'm only now coming out of it.

[flashl]

2. Huge industry, transplant tourists. nt

[Phred42]

3. Careful where you get your Steak & Kidney Pie!

Hey, Free Market baby.

Soilent Green is next - Hamburger? Sauage? from Communist China? India?

It nothing personal - it's just business


:rofl: