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BELGRADE, Serbia — Serbia's war crimes prosecutor is looking into reports that dozens of Serbs captured by rebels during the war in Kosovo were killed so their organs could be trafficked, the prosecutor's office said Friday. The Serbian prosecutor's office said it received "informal statements" from investigators at the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, that dozens of Serbs imprisoned by Kosovo Albanian rebels were taken to neighboring Albania in 1999 and killed so their organs could be harvested and sold to international traffickers. Bruno Vekaric, the Serbian prosecutor's spokesman, said later on B92 radio that Serbian war crimes investigators...

The Hague Prosecution learned while investigating war crimes committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army against Serbs and other ethnic communities that people that disappeared in 1999 in Kosovo were subjected to surgery in which their kidneys and other organs were taken from them and then the smugglers were selling them to foreign clinics, Carla Del Ponte, former chief prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal wrote in her book ‘Hunt’. ‘The victims were most likely abducted after NATO bombing when international peace-keeping forces were already deployed in Kosovo’. Even high KLA members were involved in the operation of smuggling of organs, Del...

One Bulgarian doctor has been arrested for suspected involvement in human organs trafficking, Sofia's Police announced today. According to the same source, the arrested is Stanislav Hristov, the Head of the Pathology Department at the Aleksandrovska Hospital in Sofia. He has been charged with multiple violations of the regulations on human organs handling and transplantation for personal gain. The Public Prosecution Office requested the doctor to be ordered a temporary detention. When asked by Bgnes Agency to comment the case, the Director of the Sofia's Hospital, Assistant Professor Asen Zlatev, said that he would like to see the results of...

The scandal involving kidney transplant kingpin Dr Amit Kumar is just the tip of an iceberg and there are many more bigger racketeers still operating across India, Aruna Th-Hollingshead, a leading agent of medical tourism has revealed. “Having been in the medical field for over 35 years, I can bet my life that Dr Kumar couldn’t hold a surgical knife. There is definitely a team of very experienced and highly skilled nephrologists who have transplanted these kidneys,” Aruna Th-Hollingshead told HT by phone from her Calgary-based office. Aruna, as she likes to be called, is also the North American representative...

LONDON, January 17, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The British government's plans to consider a presumed consent scheme for organ donations was put on the back burner this week as a government appointed taskforce recommended alternative methods to increase organ donations by 50 per cent. But the wording of the recommendations has alarmed pro-life advocates who warn they may increase threats to the lives of vulnerable patients. Elisabeth Buggins, chair of the task force, wrote, "The UK has one of the worst records for organ donation in Western Europe. The Taskforce was, however, greatly encouraged by the evidence it considered from across...

London - Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday threw his weight behind a move to allow hospitals to remove organs from dead patients without explicit consent. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Mr. Brown said such a move would save thousands of lives and that he hopes such a system can start this year. The proposals would mean consent for organ donation after death would be automatically presumed, unless individuals had opted out of a national register or family members objected.

Gordon Brown has thrown his weight behind a move to allow hospitals to take organs from dead patients without explicit consent.

Organs to be taken without consent By Patrick Hennessy and Laura Donnelly  Last Updated: 9:21pm GMT 12/01/2008     Gordon Brown has thrown his weight behind a move to allow hospitals to take organs from dead patients without explicit consent.   There are more than 8,000 patients waiting for an organ donation   Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, the Prime Minister says that such a facility would save thousands of lives and that he hopes such a system can start this year. The proposals would mean consent for organ donation after death would be automatically presumed, unless individuals had opted...

When Malaka, an Indian tsunami refugee, agreed to sell her kidney, the organ broker told her she would receive $3,500. But after the operation, he gave her only $700 - for an organ that a wealthy foreigner likely paid $40,000. "She got what she deserved," the broker told the National Geographic Channel in an "Explorer" episode, "Inside the Body Trade," that airs tonight. Later, when Malaka's son's kidneys were failing, the doctor told her, "You gave away your kidney. Now your child needs a kidney. Who will give it to him?" While free-market types have talked up Transplant Tourism as...

(BEIJING) — A Japanese man who brokered human transplant operations on the Internet has been arrested in China and charged with violating laws on organ trading, Chinese officials said Tuesday. The man was arrested in northeast China's Shenyang city for "illegal trading" in recent days, said foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao. Liu said the man had posted messages on the Internet since 2004 under the name of his China-based company to provide organ transplants for Japanese patients. "This has violated the Ministry of Health's regulations which ban the trading of organs... so he was arrested," Liu told reporters, adding that...

Health authorities are setting clinical criteria on brain death to facilitate human organ transplants, a senior official said Wednesday. A panel of medical and ethical experts have been convened to define brain death and associated clinical rules, Mao Qun'an, spokesman for the Ministry of Health, revealed. "But it's still early to make legislation," Mao told a regular press conference, apparently contradicting recent media reports that a law on brain death is being framed. Huang Jiefu, vice-minister of health and a liver transplant specialist, earlier told the China Organ Transplant forum that the definition of brain death is key to legislation....

(LONDON) — Chinese medical officials agreed Friday not to transplant organs from prisoners or others in custody, except into members of their immediate families. The agreement was reached at a meeting of the World Medical Association in Copenhagen. China has previously acknowledged that kidneys, livers, corneas and other organs are routinely removed from prisoners sentenced to death row. But officials insist that this only happens when consent is provided. Critics argue that death-row prisoners are not truly free to consent and may feel compelled to become donors, violating personal, religious or cultural beliefs. The announcement Friday comes after several years...

Three Philadelphia-Area Funeral Directors Nabbed in Scheme Selling Body Parts Thursday, October 04, 2007 PHILADELPHIA — Three funeral directors sold hundreds of bodies to a former oral surgeon who allegedly collected the bones, tissue and skin from the corpses to be used in transplants, a grand jury charged Thursday after a 16-month investigation. The 244 bodies fetched about $1,000 each, the grand jury found, with the body parts being transplanted in unsuspecting medical patients worldwide. Michael Mastromarino, who operated the now-defunct Biomedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee, N.J., ran the scheme with help from a team of "cutters" who stole...

After a long fight with a degenerative disease, Ruben Navarro appeared close to death. So the hospital caring for him alerted the local transplant network, which rushed a team to the medical center to try to salvage the 25-year-old's organs. But as Navarro hung on, tension mounted in the operating room of Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center in San Luis Obispo, Calif. With time slipping away, one of the transplant surgeons ordered repeated doses of the narcotic morphine and the sedative Ativan, jokingly calling the drugs "candy," according to police reports. Navarro eventually died, but too late for his organs...

The Ministry of Health is gearing up to introduce a nationwide definition of brain death to facilitate human organ transplants, said Vice-Minister Huang Jiefu. The authorities will start mapping out the criteria needed to define brain death in October. Huang made the remarks at the just concluded China Organ Transplant Forum in Beijing, which was organized to bring together experts to provide suggestions on how the legislation and standards governing organ transplants could be improved. "Determining the criteria is the key to our most important goal - producing legislation on brain death," Huang said. It is officially estimated that 2...

(SHANGHAI) - More than 10,000 people received liver transplants in China between March 2005 and May 2007. Most of the patients' information is registered with the China Liver Transplant Registration (CLTR) system. Several of Shanghai's more reputable hospitals, including Renji Hospital, Zhongshan Hospital and Ruijin Hospital, are participating in the system. The CLTR statistics showed that the one-year survival rate for people who have undergone a liver transplant has doubled in recent years. From 2003 to 2006, 84 percent of such patients survived for more than a year. And the three-year survival rate increased to about 75 percent in 2006...

(HONG KONG)--Paul Lee got his liver from an executed Chinese prisoner; Karam in Egypt bought a kidney for his sister for $5,300; in Istanbul Hakan is holding out for $30,700 for one of his kidneys. They are not so unusual: a dire shortage of donated organs in rich countries is sending foreigners with end-stage illnesses to poorer places like China, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Colombia and the Philippines to buy a new lease of life. Lee, a 53-year-old chief subway technician in Hong Kong, was diagnosed with liver cancer in January 2005 but doctors denied him a transplant because they feared...

Mainland China's well known media Southern Weekly , published a front page article titled "China Puts A Stop on 'Organ Transplant Tourism'" on July 19, 2007. The article reported on the recent restrictions imposed on organ transplants performed on foreigners by Chinese hospitals, and exposed the inside story behind these organ transplants in Mainland China, which are performed under the rule of the Communist Party. A Very Profitable Business Organ transplants skyrocketed after 1999 and hospitals reaped huge profits. The Southern Weekly mentioned that "liver transplants increased at a shocking rate: in 1999 only 24 liver transplants were performed; in...

Last November (2006) this discussion was on-going. Any news update? At a meeting today and tomorrow, the Department of Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Organ Transplantation is expected to recommend that states adopt policies of "presumed consent" for organ donation. Dr. Peter Lawler declared that the very idea that people own their organs was an "offense [to] dignity." In other words, authorities could harvest organs from your dead body without prior permission from you or your family.

A San Francisco transplant surgeon was criminally charged today with allegedly attempting to hasten the death last year of a 26-year-old disabled man on life support in order to harvest his organs more quickly. The charges are the first in the nation against a physician for his role in a transplant and are sure to raise further uneasiness about a somewhat controversial practice in which organs are retrieved before a patient is brain-dead. The San Luis Obispo County district attorney's office accused Dr. Hootan Roozrokh, 33, of dependent adult abuse, administering a harmful substance and prescribing an unlawful controlled substance...