In August 2010, the bodies of 72 immigrants were discovered in Tamaulipas, a state in northeastern Mexico. While nobody knows the sequence of events that led to this massacre, it is well known that Tamaulipas is at the center of a turf war between two powerful drug cartels, the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel. Control of territory and trafficking routes is critical as it enables the cartels to expand their criminal operations to include other moneymaking endeavors like fuel bunkering, prostitution, kidnapping, and even software piracy.
Across the Atlantic, a recent report for the Council of Europe has named Hashim Thaçi, the prime minister of Kosovo and wartime leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), in connection with the Drenica organized crime group. This criminal organization “flourished in Kosovo and Albania after the war and exerted control over numerous rackets, including the heroin trade, and six secret detention centers in Albania, some used in a black market in human organs.”
When you first hear about it, the trafficking of human organs sounds like a gruesome black-market practice, carried out by the shadowy characters of the global criminal underworld. And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. Just Google “organ trafficking” and you’ll see hundreds of pictures of people holding up their shirts to reveal long scars from where their kidneys have been removed. None of the people photographed look like your college roommate or the captain of the tennis team. None of them are reclined in a plush Manhattan parlor or smiling as they climb into the back of a town car. They’re usually sitting on the dirty city streets of developing countries or lying on hospital cots looking undernourished and desperate. Add to this image the unconfirmed reports of people being kidnapped for the express purpose of organ removal and the whole business just seems disgusting and hellish.
But what if your son WAS the captain of the tennis team? And what if you were told that without a kidney transplant he only had a few months left to live? And—by the way—he’ll join thousands of people on a waiting list (Good luck!). OR … for $100,000 someone offers to get you a kidney and perform the surgery and the whole thing can be taken care of in two weeks. Not only that: the donor is an Egyptian man who has come upon hard times and is eager to make $5,000 so he can provide for his family.
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