A BBC Scotland documentary on organ sales is on TV tonight. The reporter discovers, shockingly, that:
There is a black market in kidneys here in the UK.
I secretly filmed people trying to sell me their kidneys, exploiting the vulnerability of someone who is desperate to help a family member.
They are also trying to exploit the very law that has changed to allow me to make a ‘stranger donation’.
They wanted to fool the authorities – the first woman I met started with an asking price of £250,000, another man wanted the ‘price of a Mercedes’ – £60,000.
I met them in cafes across the UK and their actions were shocking.
They know they are doing something illegal and just don’t seem to care.
I met with a man who was a ‘transplant tourist’, who paid £7,000 in Pakistan to buy a kidney.
I understand his desperation but I then travelled to India and met with the very people who are selling their kidneys.They have been butchered – their scars are huge and they have long-term health problems.It did make me doubt my actions for a moment, but I realise that what I am doing is done with great care to me and does not involve money.
Two things: this is why a free market operates more efficiently, and to everyone’s benefit, than a closed one and secondly and more seriously, when did it become acceptable for Britishers to adopt the (awful) Americanism “meet with“?
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