https://www.scoop.it/t/organ-trafficking-conference

Different parts of the body have different value in the "black market."

Scheper-Hughes: The Global Traffic in Organs

What was most striking about the article and why?

One of the ideas discussed in this article is that people who are desperate for money often see some of their organs as an excess. Before reading this article, I never knew that some people who sell their organs actually justify it by thinking that it is okay since they have two of the same organ, or that they think that don’t really need it to survive. When I read some of the statements in this article, such as, “I am willing to sell any organ of my body that is not vital to my survival,” “It could be a kidney or an eye because I have two of them,” and “ordinary people began to view their matched organs as redundancies” (Scheper-Hughes, 194), I was in shock. I could not understand how people could think of an eye as an excess. However, after finishing the article and discussing it in class, I am better at understand the desperation that some people are in and the things they are willing to do to feed their families or to simply survive a few more days. Although this kind of thinking will always shock me, I believe that I am better at understanding where these thoughts are coming from now than before reading the article.  

How did it change my world view?

This article changed my world view about organ possession. While I previously thought that organs are always a human’s own possession, this article taught me otherwise. I knew that human organ trafficking existed, however I never knew at what scale and that a country could feel that they can own a person’s body. More specifically, this article talked about China’s prisons, and that executed prisoners are often used for their organs without their consent. I have previously heard that prisoners around the world are used to do labor without being paid, or being paid in pennies, and about the harsh conditions in prisons. However, I did not know that our world is so cruel that they would take the last of what an already oppressed person had and take it away from them. This type of knowledge makes me more weary about what goes on in our world. 

People who are desperate for money think that turning to the black market where they can make profit off of their organs is the "only way out" (screenshot for Underworld Inc S02E03|Organ Trade documentary).