ANALYSIS OF HUMAN ORGAN TRAFFICKING IN INDIA

Abstract

“Eventually, red markets have the nasty social side effect of moving flesh upward — never downward — through social classes. Even without a criminal element, unrestricted free markets act like vampires, sapping the health and strength from ghettos of poor donors and funneling their parts to the wealthy.”

There is a ubiquitous fact that one day each and every thing which has life, have to surrender itself to eternity but human being is keenly desirous to live an unending life or life as long as can be. To save life and reduce pain from human life medical science has reached to a revolution in the sphere of organ replacement. Organ transplantation is the moving of an organ from one body to another or from a donor site to another location on the person's own body, to replace the recipient's damaged or absent organ. Organs that can be transplanted are the heart, kidneys, lungs, pancreas, intestine, and thymus. There is a worldwide shortage of organs available for transplantation, yet commercial trade in human organs was at one point illegal in all countries except Iran. Transplantation raises a number of bioethical issues, including the definition of death, when and how consent should be given for an organ to be transplanted, and payment for organs for transplantation. Other ethical issues include transplantation tourism and more broadly the socio-economic context in which organ procurement or transplantation may occur. A particular problem is organ trafficking.

 India, which seems to be at the middle of much of the red market trade, having the unique and unfortunate combination of huge population, massive poverty, widespread corruption, ineffectual bureaucracies, enormous wealth discrepancy, and a post-colonial relationship with the west whose legacy is a set of trade routes and relationships for everything from articulated skeletons (dug up by grave-robbers who terrorize whole villages) to human hair. Currently, the international community has also not responded adequately to the problem of organ trafficking. Legal provisions exist prohibiting this crime, but, where there are provisions, there are often weak enforcement policies and few prosecutions.