theatlantic:

Living Cadavers: How Bangladesh’s Poor Are Tricked Into Selling Their Organs

After they agree to donate, sellers are tissue tested, and if there is a match, the broker will offer the seller around $1,150. But in most cases, the sellers do not receive anywhere near that amount. The organ brokers tack on extra fees for travel and other logistics, and the sellers make sometimes only half the initial amount — and even then only after the surgery is completed.

The brokers forge fake passports and legal documents to make it appear plausible that the seller is donating to a blood relative. In one case, Michigan State anthropologist Monir Moniruzzaman found a 38-year-old Hindu seller who had to get circumcised to donate to a Muslim recipient. The circumcision was done crudely and only with local anesthesia. “When I was coming back home, the anesthesia stopped working,” he told the anthropologist, “and I felt like it was a nightmare.”

Most of the sellers Moniruzzaman spoke to were taken to India for the surgery, and upon arrival they had their passports confiscated so they could not leave. “One case I found [was] a 23-year-old college student,” he says. “He went to India and realized that he was making a mistake. So he wanted to come back without giving his kidney. The broker hired two thugs — Indian thugs — and they basically beat him and forced him to go to the operation room.”

This man, like all the other sellers, woke up from surgery with a 20-inch long scar around his torso — a constant reminder that he sold part of his body for a few hundred dollars. “We are living cadavers,” another told Moniruzzaman. “By selling our kidneys, our bodies are lighter but our chests are heavier than ever.”

Read more. [Image: Monir Moniruzzaman]