Vera's Kidney, Walter's Money: Desparation, Greed and the Global Organ Trade

[sysop]

She was a poor Russian immigrant in Israel, he was a well-off German businessman. The case of Vera and Walter reveals a thriving illegal trade in kidneys and other organs -- and shows how it is fueled by desperation.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...847473,00.html

[Inglenda2]

Often a subject in German television criminal stories, is the desperation and greed which leads to crime within the world trade of human organs. An organisation, with a structure similar to that of the Mafia, involving politicians, forced health-insurance, industrial pharmacy and clinics, is bound to provide dishonest minds with opportunities undreamed of by normal hard-working doctors and patients.
The real problem however, is not the circumstances leading to rich people being given preference over those less wealthy, but rather, that where so much dishonesty is shown to take place by an implantation, it must also be expected at the scene of the extraction.
Due to the fact, only living organic matter is suitable for transplantation, there was always (and still remains), a great danger of such material being removed before the death of a donor has occurred. Now some Ministers in Germany are even suggesting, it shall no longer be a crime for doctors to speed up the death of a patient.
Will it soon be the case of those who pay the most may live the longest? In such circumstances we are moving into regions which are not very far from the Hitler thesis of valued and unvalued forms of life.