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The Real Body Snatchers
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC are reporting on a grisly trade lying behind the booming business for replacement body parts in medical procedures. Many unscrupulous "dealers" will procure body parts from anyone willing to deal them — e.g., undertakers, medics — and will process them for resale onto legitimate companies. Apparently a fully processed cadaver can fetch up to $250,000. Now, who says I'm worth more alive than dead?"
Want to own your own home instead of leeching one off the taxpayer? Apply inside. $250,000 could be yours.
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
I honestly don't get the big deal with this. Now myself I am religious, but when I'm dead. I'm dead. And unless we figure out how to freeze people then revive them, this doesn't seem like a big deal. You get your grave for people to remember you, and your organs are put to good use. Seems like a fair trade to me.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
Organleggers will exist until we develop proper organ cloning. The moral dilemma over cloning and stem cell research will hamper any progress in this area and allow the organleggers to continue, much like the drug trade has.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
In his Gil "The Arm" Hamilton stories (collected in Flatlander ) Larry Niven speculated that once organ transplants were common, the government would end up making everything, even jaywalking, merit the death penalty to insure a good supply of organs. China has already started using organs from executed prisoners, how long before it spreads to India and even the West?
The Healthwatch Blog has an interesting take on things. Very interesting
Larry Niven coined the term "organlegger" to describe individuals who obtained and resold body parts through less than scrupulous means.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
"Now, who says I'm worth more alive than dead?"
It depends... do you know the secret combination to a safe holding multibilion dollar amounts and are susceptible of talking under... preemptive advice?
Onda Technology Institute
Not only does this make it easier to dispose of the body after you whack somebody, but you make money at the same time!
It's win-win!
How much is my left little finger worth?
Don't get the wrong idea, I'm quite attached to it.
So you'll have to prise it from my cold dead hands (or over my dead body)...
Oh wait...
A recent staple of science fiction is the story of people optioning their body parts for money while they're still living (companies pay you based on the value of said parts and the odds that your body will still be intact at death and not crushed in a car accident or something). Personally, I think this is not so unlikely as many science fiction scenarios. After all, about the only thing standing in the way are medical ethics regulations, and when times get tight, you can bet that corruption will put a stop to those.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
How can I get in on this?
'Thats why I dont sign my doner card. When you get into an accident and the abulance comes, and they see you have that card. Do you honestly think they are there to help you?? Hell no, they are looking for spare parts.' Or even better. knock.knock: Door opens. "Yes, can I help you??" 'Are yu such and such' 'Yes I am'. "We're here for you liver." ;)
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
How about this very recent article, also from BBC. The crime they describe is blood donations (for cash) from a farm of living people.
This is not my sig
This happened to Alistair Cooke's body.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alistair_Cooke#Later_Life_and_Death
I've got a middle finger that I would gladly give George W. Bush for free.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
As an organ donor, I have to wonder how much those of you who aren't organ donors are to blame for this.
How much of a market would there be if the organs were available as a result of donation?
Now, who says I'm worth more alive than dead? I believe that would be Boba Fett.
"My cousin went to school with a guy that this happened to."
Are you sure it wasn't your cousin's mother's sister's uncle?
PLEASE don't tell my wife!
Fry: Now that you mention it, I do have trouble breathing underwater sometimes. I'll take the gills.
Shady organ dealer: Yes, gills. Then, uh, you don't need lungs anymore, is right?
Fry: Can't imagine why I would.
Shady organ dealer: Lie down on table. I take lungs now, gills come next week.
The parent links to GNAA's Last Measure shock site.
You forgot to mention that he woke up in a tub full of ice.
After that, of course, public objections to the death penalty drop since it's a source of spare parts. Eventually death becomes the standard penalty for any felony.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Bit of a recursive profit, but hey. You get to blow $250k, then get killed and math applied (divisions, mainly).
Just get a guarantee for them to wait until you're dead before they start dividing you.
Yeah, I know. Something I ate disagreed with me (and no, you can't have my stomach).
Insert
Yup, you're worth a lot of money dead. To everyone but you. Imagine if _you_ had the right to decide to sell your corpse for a profit, the good you could do: You could leave that money to your family, donate it to charities. You could also do wonders to eliminate the organ donor waiting list -- if, presumably, you could directly sell your organs to folks willing to pay for them.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
It is officially now a race to produce a link to Snopes discussing kidney thieves.
More Twoson than Cupertino
You'd better make sure that we're properly dead before you start ol' Ripbeak!
Who want's to start a web site where I can sell futures on my dead body.
If I'm worth 250K in lets say 50 years when I'm dead.
Assume that that goes up by inflation, (probably more).
I'll sell of the rights to my dead body now for about 200k
Any takers.
[It will have to go through enough solicitors that you don't get my address and come 'round to ensure that you get to cash in sooner rather than later though]
http://davesboat.blogspot.com/
He woke up in the hospital. Was that not clear?
Has anyone EVER asserted that Taco was worth more than a quarter of a million? Anyone? Anyone?
I didn't think so.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/anonymous_philanthropist_donates
I'm probably not the only person who has received the "live or die" email claiming to come from a hitman. If by the email someone could take a body for $9,000 or less, and then by the story sell it for $250,000, then there is certainly money to be made.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Whooossshhhh...
rj
Soylent Green
Bon appetite
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
People always argue that we shouldn't be able to buy and sell organs because it gives the rich an unfair advantage over the poor when they need an organ transplant - but this viewpoint ignores the fact that being able to pay for organs actually increases the supply of organs. I guarantee you that many, many more people would check the "I want to donate my organs if I die" box if they knew that their surviving family would be gettings some money for it. Likewise, people would be much more likely to allow the organs of their deceased family members to be harvested if they received money for it. In the end, allowing people to pay for organs results in more people getting transplants and surviving.
Whilst the article covers the stealing of bodies, which is pretty deplorable, there is an interesting question raised by it.
Student doctors and some other trainee medical staff need to practice on deceased bodies. In the UK at least, it was possible to donate your body to science (and in the USA too I believe?). How do you go about doing this I wonder? Does the Donor Card, carried by many of us in the UK cover this as well - maybe they can't use your organs as donating material for some reason (disease, medications etc), but your body could be used for training the doctors of tomorrow?
If that is the case, I would be quite happy for them to practice on me once I am dead (I take too many tablets for any of my organs to be of use), but it may not be a popular idea with some people for whatever reason (cultural, religion etc).Maybe the Donor Card needs to have an additional box - When I am dead, please use my body for training the Medical Staff of tomorrow. If enough donations were received, surely the kind of activity mentioned in the article would be stopped.
I had a feeling that at one time you could specifically state that you wished to donate your body to science in the UK and, following your death, your body was handed to the students for their traning and then your remains would be cremated without any expense to your family.
I have no problem with donating my body to science - hell, they already have my right kidney, complete with huge tumour, in a jar somewhere....!
Awful UID - but I have been here ages...
Now I have to change my will.
Let's see:
Organ donor card? check.
Sunday NY times? check.
1994 jeep cherokee? check.
road map of my nations capitol with dump sites marked? check.
All right, I'm ready for the end, when it comes.
"I'm not affraid of dieing. Ijust don't want to be there when it happens."
-- Sig under construction...
As long as my head can be kept alive in a jar....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
It's a good idea. With the aging of the baby boomers and looming medical care costs for families, it makes sense.
I came across this when noted (and lovable) BBC radio journalist and Masterpiece Theater presenter Alastair Cooke's body bits were stolen after his death:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alastair_Cooke#Later_Life_and_Death
- the bodysnatchers changed his age on his death certificate from 95 to 85 (presumably to bump up his value), and ignored the fact that his cancerous bones would have been useless for transplant. Caveat emptor indeed.
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
The black market has no such controls. So the body parts being implanted in your favorite Aunt Florence could have come from a drug-addicted HIV-positive person with hepatitis C. The hospital has purchased the parts from a 'legitimate' source and now they can't figure out what happened to Aunt Florence over a simple hip replacement.
The morals of such a practice are one thing. The actual physical dangers are quite another.
They were the ultimate body snatchers of all time.
There are some diseases that survive death and transplant screening like HIV and listeria. Several cases of bad cartilage used in knee repairs and plastic surgery. You need to know the source of the material and cause of death.
If there's a profit to be made, the money should go to relatives/charity, not some double-dealing shyster.
No sig today...
People are laughing, but this one was reported in mainstream news
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/anonymous_philanthropist_donates
Selling your organs is illegal in the US. You can _donate_ them to whoever you like -- I have relatives who have donated their bodies to science, for instance -- but you can't sell them. Ebay would be a far more interesting and lucrative place if you could.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
Great Idea, People are only murdered for inheritance now, with this idea, they will be killed for the body too, sort of a two for one deal.
Could work but would bring up the euthanasia storm again - the controls would be tricky to implement for those truly wishing to sell their own body without risking being coerced, tricked, etc by greedy relatives.
I'm obviously worth more alive than dead. Think about it... I have some 25-30 good years of work left in me. Even if I only made $20,000 a year, that's still a worth of half a million dollars over the next 25 years. If an employer is willing to pay you that for your labor, that must be your worth. Add to that your contributions to society that aren't directly related to your job, and $250,000 seems paltry.
Oh man, tell me about it. My aunt's second cousin's dog's sister's father's owner's grandmother's great grand-niece's former roomate was kidnapped by aliens, but then the aliens were spaceship-jacked by a bunch of street thugs before they could even get the anal probe in all the way. She was taken to a secluded shack in Montana where Jimmy Hoffa came out with a rusty scalpel and a copy of "Home Surgery for Dummies". Luckily, a Sasquatch riding on a Chupacabra broke in just in the nick of time and took her off to his treehouse high up in the Rockies. After a few months, though, he kicked her out because apparently she was supposed to be paying half of the rent or something, and she ended up wandering around the forest for several days until she passed out. Anyway, she came to in a back-alley surgery, and there was a big guy in dirty scrubs negotiating with the zombie Jeffrey Dahmer over who got what part of her body. Luckily, she managed to break free, but as soon as she got out the door she was picked up by federal agents who flew her off to Area 51 in a black helicopter and locked her in a closet with some freaky squid looking thing from some planet in the vicinity of Alpha Centauri (or so he claimed). He was just setting out the silverware so he could devour her in a more civilized fashion when a bunch of those weird guys who like to look at Area 51 all day with binoculars in order to find government conspiracies broke in and whisked her off. Unfortunately, they were short on meth and had no cash, but they did have the phone number for the Harvard Medical School, so they knocked her out, and she came to a few days later in the middle of the 405 freeway in a tub of ice.
Anyway, to make a long story short, she was missing three fingers, her left kneecap, three and a half yards of small intestine, three quarters of her right lung, and her spleen. Really scary stuff.
And if I buy your body, because I need liver transplantation, what exactly will stop me from paying someone else to shoot you in the head in front of my hospital. I have nothing to lose - I will die if I don't get that liver... but I have money. It will be obvious that I am involved, but still I have a chance to get away if the cops don't find sufficient evidence that links the killing to me.
Certain death or RISK of prison time/death sentence ?
This Cadaver?
PatRIOTically As Usual,
K Trout
"...Many unscrupulous "dealers" will procure body parts from anyone willing to deal them -- e.g., undertakers, medics..." First of all, I did read the majority of TFA, and I did not see them mention cases involving ambulances or Paramedics. Having quite a few friends in EMS, and having worked in an ambulance myself as an EMT, I can attest to the fact that it would be impossible to snatch a body a pawn it off to a doctor for research. As an emergency medical provider, you are essentially taking custody of a patient, similar to how a police office can take some one into custody. In that position you are liable for the well being of that patient, and ensuring they are treated well and delivered to their destination, be that a hospital, nursing home, or 'other' facility. Along with that responsibility comes the appropriate paperwork and documentation that demonstrates you lived up to your end of the deal. To insinuate that the hard working people that pull you out of a car when you wrap it around a tree, drag you out from between the toilet and the bathtub when you have your heart attack, or get up out of bed at zero dark thirty to pick your grandmother up off the floor when she fell are hawking bodies for some extra dollars is insulting. Please watch what you say
This sounds like a nice chunk of change for my family. Sort of a bonus on top of my life insurance. Gotta find one of these "dealers".
And if he is will we see a monster made out of dead people parts?
hey! you cheated! False start!
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
Some of my colleagues have done research on the human chest wall (skin, ribs, etc.). When a body is processed for burial, some internal organs are removed, and a portion of the chest wall is also removed before the body is sewn back up. Some of these specimens wind up getting sold to researchers.
These are above-board purchases, and probably legal more or less, but I sure doubt that proper donor consent was obtained in most cases . . .
For your estate planning needs: Cadaver Calculator http://www.justsayhi.com/bb/cadaver
According to a related story, the mastermind of a major body snatching ring -- the one that looted Alistair Cooke's cancer-ridden corpse -- was Michael Mastromarino.
I mean, wow! If there's a name that shouts "Unscrupulous Villain," it's Mastromarino.
Maybe not as much as "Hans Darkbloode" or "Lucious Skjulreever," but still . . .
Think I'll let somebody sell my organs without giving me a fair cut of the profits?
OVER MY DEAD BODY!!!
Move all sig!
I'm not as concerned about getting black market body parts as I am about the consequences of missing a payment.
"Stiff" by Mary Roach. Goes into extensive detail about just how many uses dead bodies have. A few: forensics (letting them decay and recording what sorts of insects colonize them and when, which gives immense amounts of data to people who are trying to analyze time-of-death, also covered extensively in "A Fly For The Prosecution" by Madison Goff, and other books.
Safety testing: putting corpses in cars and crashing them gives much better results on skull fractures and such than Buster The Dummy. Likewise, dropping corpses in elevators or off buildings into safety nets, or measuring the protective qualities of bullet-proof jackets. It's hard to get good results using pigs.
(I saw Mary Roach read from this book one time, and it was creepy, not because of her and the book, but because just about everyone in the audience ended up asking really detailed, scary questions about treatment of dead bodies, since apparently most of them had experience in the subject.)
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Something which is not very well known but probably is an instance of one of the largest violation of human rights and illegal harvesting and sale of human body parts, and which are healthy and normal body parts that are being illegally and unethically removed from the bodies of millions of children every year is circumcision. Foreskins, which are a normal and healthy part of the human body and for which there is no justifiable or medically sound and valid rationale for removing a normal and healthy part of the human body that has no medical diseases whatsoever, are harvested from young children, and then are sold to corporations, including pharmacuetical companies, where they are used to manufacture cosmetics and for testing. SkinMedica is one such product which is made from foreskin fibroblasts, and which has been promoted by Oprah Winfrey, who apparently is aware that a major component of the product is human neonatal foreskins stolen from genitally mutilated boys. Ironically, Oprah's show in the past has decried female circumcision. I suppose from Oprah's point of view, the genital mutilation and destruction of parts of boys anatomy is acceptable, this is only unacceptable when done to girls, since apparently only girls deserve to be protected from demeaning, dehumanising genital mutilations, torture and assault. Apparently girls are entitled to more rights to a whole body than boys are.
If a person, as an adult, wants to be circumcised, male or female, they are free to make that choices for themselves, with fully informed consent. it should be the right of the person to make their own choices about removals of normal and undiseased parts of their bodies. It is a basic human right to physical integrity, and unless we uphold a medical standard and universal principle which requires an actual medical abnormality to be present on the part to removed from an unconsenting, this right is not being honoured and respected, and as well, we have no standard to define what is an assault. Any clear assault could be made permissable by society at its own whim, even if it is to the detriment of individual rights. Since circumcision cannot be undone and what is taken cannot be gotten back, the decision should be the person whose body it is, since only they will be able to decide what is best for them. Perhaps some men prefer to remain intact for aesthetic reasons or to retain full sensitivity. We should do what gives the individual the most freedom, since all rights and liberties are based in the individual. Parents do not have a right to do anything to their children and their responsibilities are to protect their children from harm. Children are not extensions of their parents bodies and children do have human rights which are seperate from the parents and are considered seperate, individual persons. Removing or destroying a healthy and undiseased part of a childs body is considered child abuse and it is an assault upon the child by definition , circumcision is a removal of a healthy and undiseased part of the childs body. Removals of parts of the body are permenant and cannot be undone later. A person can always change their beliefs later on, but they cannot undo damage to their body if they did not want this. Therefore, removal of normal parts of human anatomy should be deferred to a time when the person is of the age they can make with fully informed consent these decisions for themselves. The foreskin is a normal and healthy part of the human anatomy and has been a part of the anatomy of mammals and their predecessors for over 100 million years. All mammals have foreskins, including both males and females.
Of course we already know that male or female circumcision is an invalid and wrong genital mutilation of children, since it violates medical ethics. Everyone has a basic human right to a whole body, and to not have parts of their body removed without their consent unless there is a serious, critical, present and current medical condition on that part and where removing it is necessary to treat that medical ab
She sorta knows already (damn you got a small freezer) now get home so I can hear me 500.000 for today!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
So to get your head frozen it costs like 50,000 dollors, but if you sell your internal organs and the rest of the body besides the head you can get roughly 200,000 from it, sounds like a good 150,000 profit plus you get your head frozen and someday they may beable to unfreeze it/virtualize your brain/etc.....
Could be the right choice for childless nerds who want their legacy of nerditity to live on.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Wait, does this mean I can get a cash advance for my organs I'll be donating in the future?
Not Mr. Potter, for sure.
Apparently a fully processed cadaver can fetch up to $250,000. Now, who says I'm worth more alive than dead?"
I thought I heard someone say that the average healthy adult is worth about $2 million in the human smuggling business?
"Let's face it, it's a good story. Accuracy would kill it."
1) Snatch up some of these foreclosing homes
:-)
2) Make them burglary honeypots
3) Harvest your catches
4) Profit!
No ???? needed!
Well, not for the receiver. It might be for the donor, if the technical issues could be worked out.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
You could be pressured by debt collectors to start selling parts of yourself off now.
You could even take out loans against the organs that will still be presumably healthy when you die. Loans at extremely high interest rates. Oh, but wait, you actually lived too long, or died in a way such that not as many organs were still viable, so that debt will be taken out of the estate.
If that sounds too extreme to be true, consider that just this morning I heard a commercial for loans against the future awards from lawsuits *still in progress*. And of course, there's the long-running structured settlement thing where they advertise "it's my money, and I want it now!" and neglect to mention that the lawyer who negotiates it into a lump sum is going to keep 60%.
The laws against homicide and solicitation of murder, perhaps?
But if you're going to fry for my liver, I would recommend taking some onions and butter with you to the electric chair?
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
I don't see it as being particularly tricky, but then, I expect that people are capable of _not_ being idiots. Anyone who does manage to find themselves as being an actual idiot, well, they pretty much deserve what they get. Anyone can think rationally. It's not that hard. That some choose not to, or do not do so wisely is not my concern.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
If you manage to get yourself into stupid financial dealings, you're an idiot. There's (unfortunately) no law against being an idiot. (See recent other replies in this thread for more on that topic.)
It's no different than the current subprime thing. Idiot people wanted to own things they couldn't afford; idiot banks lent them money they should have reasonably known the idiot people couldn't/wouldn't pay back; Idiot shareholders didn't tell the idiot banks to stop lending to idiot people and kept on investing in these banks anyways. Justice (in the sense everyone involved is getting what they deserve for their part in the whole thing) ensued, sans usual hilarity.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
your titanium hip socket, or pacemaker!
Those are worth their weight in gold literally and are usually removed before burial (whether legal or not in your state). There's lots of money in this.
This is a good thing really. After death the state should take possession of the body and recycle anything that is economically viable. Why should we put good gold and titanium into the ground, along with stainless steel coffins!
Years ago I struck up a conversation with a well-dressed gentleman who described this work.
Apparently it's a very good living and a possible upward career move for former ASP.NET programmers.
Here's to Brad Pitt having a stroke on the same day that my body is crushed in a machine press.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
That would be voidable on public policy grounds. For some reason, Americans find even the voluntary sale of organs distasteful. Unfortunately, that squeamishness means a lot of innocent people have to die for lack of an available transplant.
This was discussed in the pages of Reason Magazine nearly two years ago. Can't find the URL right now; I'm at work.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
Sounds like a Microsoft move. Bet they heard Negroponte was working on affordable kidneys so they dump hundreds of kidneys into the market below cost!
Kind donation my arse....
This is a big problem, and has been going on for years. Read the book, "Body Brokers: Inside America's Underground Trade in Human Remains", or this MSNBC article about the illicit trade of body parts and tissues.
Last year, several funeral homes in New York were charged with allowing these people to come in and harvest bits and pieces from their clients (the dead), sometimes replacing things like femurs with PVC pipe.
TFA refers to cadavers for medical instruction, but regardless, the problems are twofold. One, often there is no consent. Two, there is little concern if the parts contain cancer or communicable diseases, and IIRC, several people have received infected tissue "donations" who later contracted syphillis, hepatitis, and worse.
"A witty saying proves nothing." -- Voltaire
...ride a motorcycle. I've always liked that bumper sticker.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
What's even scarier is that in most developing countries you can get organs on demand. If you got a bit of money you can purchase the organs you need, especially kidneys since they can take one from the donor without outright killing him/her. In most cases the donors are "voluntary" - people so poor they do anything to rake in a few extra dollars (or pesos in the country where I live). Some here even claim that there is an even more sinister underworld where unsuspecting "donors" are snatched from the street and diced up for resale. Don't know how much of this snatching part is true though. In any case, in the slums anything can happen when unscrupulous individuals offer lots money to the desperate...
"parisites"
Most. Accurate. Typo. Evar.
And my english teacher said my misspellings would never amount to anything.