Human organs sold online: lawmaker

By Lee Sun-Young

October 3, 2005

Due to a severe shortage of human organs available for transplants, an illicit human organ business is thriving on the Internet and an increasing number of Korean patients are looking to China for transplant donors, a lawmaker said yesterday.

According to the office of Rep. Bahk Jae-wan of the Grand National Party, some 253 postings containing a person's wish to buy or sell internal organs were found on just one online community. In a typical example, he cited, a post carried physical details of a would-be kidney donor such as his blood type, age, height and weight, together with an e-mail address. Also spotted on the online Web page were brokers advertising the possibility of kidney or liver transplants in a Chinese hospital.

Rep. Bahk claimed, aside from such individual brokers, there were at least two medical agencies which arrange such trips to China in clear violation of Korean medical laws. Like many other countries, Korean laws specifically ban the sale of human organs.

According to the Korea Network for Organ Sharing, over 14,000 Koreans are waiting for organs such as kidneys, livers and hearts, along with bone marrow and corneas as of August this year. The average waiting time, in the case of kidneys, surpasses 1,200 days - more than three years.

The number of Korean organ donors, however, is rising only slightly. Over 6,000 out of a million American brain-dead people donate their organs, while only 36 out of a million do so in Korea.

As demand and desperation grows, so does the number of Korean patients looking to other countries for transplants, especially China.

The number of Korean patients visiting China for organs transplant has increased sharply over the past few years, according to data collected by the Korean Society for Transplantation.

For the first eight months in 2004, a total of 124 patients received organ transplant operations in China, up from 73 for the whole of 2003. The figure stood at mere 23 in 2002 and four in 2001.

Among 236 people who have undergone organ transplant operations in China from 1999 till August 2004, exactly half of them, or 118, suffered from various side effects, the KST data also showed.

In eight cases, patients died after their transplant operations.

(milaya@heraldm.com)

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This article posted October 22, 2005.