Sunday, May 23, 2004
Tracking the Sale of a Kidney on a Path of Poverty and Hope
When Alberty José da Silva heard he could make money, lots of money, by selling his kidney, it seemed to him the opportunity of a lifetime. For a desperately ill 48-year-old woman in Brooklyn whose doctors had told her to get a kidney any way she could, it was.
At 38, Mr. da Silva, one of 23 children of a prostitute, lives in a slum near the airport here, in a flimsy two-room shack he shares with a sister and nine other people.
"As a child, I can remember seven of us sharing a single egg, or living for day after day on just a bit of manioc meal with salt," Mr. da Silva said in an interview.
...Now, a long scar across his side marks the place where a kidney and a rib were removed in exchange for $6,000, paid by middlemen in an international organ trafficking ring.
...
The sums being offered seemed a fortune. The minimum wage here is barely $80 a month, and work is hard to find. Many men struggle to exist on odd jobs that pay barely a dollar a day. Initially, the organ brokers paid as much as $10,000 for a kidney — more than a decade's wages.
...
With poverty offering up an unquenchable pool of volunteers, the local authorities say the ring had also begun inquiring about buying other vital organs from poor residents, including lungs, livers and corneas.
...
Worse still, after his flight back to Brazil, Mr. da Silva, who is not related to Alberty da Silva, said he was robbed of nearly all of the $6,000 he was paid for his kidney when he went to São Paulo during a layover on his flight home. "I begged and pleaded for them not to take the money, telling them that I had sold my kidney abroad and showing them the scar," he recalled, near tears.
Another donor, Rogerio Bezerra da Silva, not related to the others, also lost his kidney and his cash, which South African authorities confiscated after the ring was exposed late last year, and is now the object of mockery in his slum neighborhood.
When Alberty José da Silva heard he could make money, lots of money, by selling his kidney, it seemed to him the opportunity of a lifetime. For a desperately ill 48-year-old woman in Brooklyn whose doctors had told her to get a kidney any way she could, it was.
At 38, Mr. da Silva, one of 23 children of a prostitute, lives in a slum near the airport here, in a flimsy two-room shack he shares with a sister and nine other people.
"As a child, I can remember seven of us sharing a single egg, or living for day after day on just a bit of manioc meal with salt," Mr. da Silva said in an interview.
...Now, a long scar across his side marks the place where a kidney and a rib were removed in exchange for $6,000, paid by middlemen in an international organ trafficking ring.
...
The sums being offered seemed a fortune. The minimum wage here is barely $80 a month, and work is hard to find. Many men struggle to exist on odd jobs that pay barely a dollar a day. Initially, the organ brokers paid as much as $10,000 for a kidney — more than a decade's wages.
...
With poverty offering up an unquenchable pool of volunteers, the local authorities say the ring had also begun inquiring about buying other vital organs from poor residents, including lungs, livers and corneas.
...
Worse still, after his flight back to Brazil, Mr. da Silva, who is not related to Alberty da Silva, said he was robbed of nearly all of the $6,000 he was paid for his kidney when he went to São Paulo during a layover on his flight home. "I begged and pleaded for them not to take the money, telling them that I had sold my kidney abroad and showing them the scar," he recalled, near tears.
Another donor, Rogerio Bezerra da Silva, not related to the others, also lost his kidney and his cash, which South African authorities confiscated after the ring was exposed late last year, and is now the object of mockery in his slum neighborhood.
Comments:
Post a Comment
| Get a hit counter here. |
