Victims of spare parts surgery

I've always believed that a market in human body parts would work well. This story gives me second thoughts: how do you know what you are buying?

Usually we think in terms of kidney transplants and the like, and look on in wonder at how few transplants take place in the current system that requires donation of organs rather than allowing price to stimulate provision.

There is already an active market in skin and tendons. As the story suggests, those body parts are relatively storable and can pass through the hands of middle men, market makers. Just where the parts were taken (evidently even taken as in stolen) can be difficult for recipient buyers to determine. This gives scope to unscrupulous behavior.

Banning trade in skin and tendons, though, would be a cure that is worse than the disease.
- - -
TAGS: organ transplant, bone bank