Posted on 01/29/2008 7:46:58 PM PST by frankjr
As the anesthetic wore off, Naseem Mohammed said, he felt an acute pain in lower left side of his abdomen. Fighting drowsiness, he fumbled beneath the unfamiliar folds of a green medical gown and traced his fingers over a bandage attached with surgical tape. An armed guard by the door told him that his kidney had been removed.
Mr. Mohammed was the last of about 500 Indians whose kidneys were removed by a team of doctors running an illegal transplant operation, supplying kidneys to rich Indians and foreigners, police officials said. A few hours after his operation last Thursday, the police raided the clinic and moved him to a government hospital.
Many of the donors were day laborers, like Mr. Mohammed, picked up from the streets with the offer of work, driven to a well-equipped private clinic, and duped or forced at gunpoint to undergo operations. Others were bicycle rickshaw drivers and impoverished farmers who were persuaded to sell their organs, which is illegal in India.
Although several kidney rings have been exposed in India in recent years, the police said the scale of this one was unprecedented. Four doctors, five nurses, 20 paramedics, three private hospitals, 10 pathology clinics and five diagnostic centers were involved, Mohinder Lal, the police officer in charge of the investigation, said.
“We suspect around 400 or 500 kidney transplants were done by these doctors over the last nine years,” said Mr. Lal, the Gurgaon police commissioner.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
there is no bottom.
Interpol looks into possible Canadian connection to organ transplant scam in India
39 minutes ago
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5hmU2FR0zb9qKtICxrLkpcmvmv3tA
OTTAWA - RCMP are looking into reports that a doctor in India who is said to have family connections in Canada was involved in the illegal sale of organs for transplant.
Police in India have raided hospitals and guest houses in a widespread investigation into a kidney transplant racket.
The scam, centred in Gurgaon - a posh suburb of New Delhi - used luxury cars outfitted with blood-testing machines to test donors on the fly as well as sophisticated surgical equipment hidden inside a residential neighbourhood.
Officials say kidneys were removed from up to 500 poor labourers and sold to wealthy patients. It is unclear if the poor people actually sold the organs or whether they were duped by dozens of doctors allegedly involved in the scheme.
Indian media report that one of several people allegedly involved in the scheme is a man whose family is based in Canada.
The suspect has been identified as Amit Kumar - one of several names used by that individual, according to media reports.
The RCMP’s Sylvie Tremblay, speaking on behalf of Interpol, said from Ottawa that authorities have very limited information on Kumar.
“Based on the limited information available at this time, we can not confirm any outstanding notices on this individual from the National Central Bureau in New Delhi,” said Tremblay.
“We can however say that Interpol Ottawa has been in communication with Interpol New Delhi about this case,” she said.
The Times of India quoted police Supt. Manjul Saini as saying police are certain Kumar’s family “is based in Canada and he visited them a fortnight ago.”
The report goes on to say that police have recovered e-mails from Kumar’s Gurgaon’s premises in which patients from Canada have inquired about the details of the operation.
Saini is quoted as saying that “dealing with foreign clients from Canada would have helped him (Kumar) avoid suspicion.”
Gurgaon Police Commissioner Mohinder Lal said on Monday that the primary suspects, including Kumar, were believed to have fled the country.
Naseem’s just lucky they only took one kidney.
In China they’d take two kidneys, two lungs, a liver, and a heart.
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/robbery/kidney.asp">
Kramer: Would you like a kidney too, because I’ll give it to you? I’ll rip it out right here and stack it on the table!
Last updated at 00:52am on 29.01.08
An illegal kidney transplant racket in which poor people were lured to a luxury "underworld" operating theatre so their organs could be sold to wealthy Westerners has been smashed by police in India.
Up to 500 kidneys are said to have been sold at vast profit over the past decade to four doctors operating from a so-called "House of Horrors", a private house in the booming IT city of Gurgaon, on the outside Delhi.
Labourers, who are drawn to the town from surrounding villages looking for work, went to the house with promises of a job but are alleged to have been duped or forced at gunpoint to sell their kidney.
They were paid 50,000 Rupees - about £600 - for their organs, which were then sold for 10 times as much to rich Indians and Westerners.
The scandal - code named "Operation Killer Kidney" by police - has gripped and horrified India with those living near the house claiming they saw streams of blood running from the building into the gutters.
The investigation has also thrown the spotlight once again on "Transplant Tourism" where rich Westerners unable to find suitable organs in their homeland travel aboard to countries where kidneys can be more easily obtained and purchased on the black market for thousands of pounds.
More than 50 medical officials are said to have been involved and last night the surgeon alleged to have headed the racket, Dr Amal Kumar, was on the run after detectives believed he received a tip-off allowing him to escape the police raid.
Dubbed "Dr Horror" and "The Organ Snatcher" in India, police are checking to see whether he has slipped out of the country as he has contacts in Britain and Saudi Arabia.
Detectives are also checking to see whether Dr Kumar is actually called Dr Santosh Raut, who ran a similar operation in the capital Delhi in the early 90s.
The case, one of the largest transplant rackets reported in India in recent years, has sparked calls for the government to tighten regulation of kidney transplants to stop backstreet operations as global demand rises.
The operation was allowed to run successfully and undetected because, in some areas of India, private clinics and hospitals do not have to be registered.
Indeed, from the exterior, House 4373 was just another anonymous two-storey building but its interior was fitted with state-of-the-art operating theatres.
One of the doctors involved is alleged to have confessed to police: "The location was perfect and convenient - it was close to the airport and convenient for international clients."
Clients were drawn from Greece, the US, Russia, Canada and Saudi Arabia - and when last week police moved in following a tip-off, five Westerners, including two Americans, were in private rooms either waiting for kidneys or having just received them.
Such was the organisation of the racketeers that scouts were employed by the doctors to go out into the community and find potential donors - each of the scouts themselves having sold their own kidneys meaning they would not betray the gang.
The scouts were paid for each "volunteer" they took to the doctors and tests for suitability were actually carried out at a state-run hospital by one of the medical officers in their pay.
One of those who sold their kidneys, Mohammed Salim, said today: "I was approached by a stranger for a job. When I accepted, I was taken to a room with gunmen.
"They tested my blood, gave me an injection and I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I had pain in my lower abdomen and I was told that my kidney had been removed."
A key police witness, Pappu Jatav, said that he had agreed to sell his kidney for the equivalent of £300 but, after tests, the organ was found to be unfit for transplant.
He said he was given about £10 and then "thrown out on the street."
Suspicious neighbours said they had noticed blood running out of the house's gutters, as well as blood-soaked bandages and even bits of flesh thrown into an open plot near the house.
Irshad Gyassuddin, one of the scouts, has told police that he ran 30 "agents" operating in several states and that his network alone had found an estimated 250 donors since 2006.
Kidney failure has become more common in rich countries, often because of obesity. But a shortage of transplant organs has fuelled a black market that exploits needy donors.
Last year, police in southern India said they had uncovered evidence of illegal trade in kidneys sold by poor fishermen and their families whose livelihoods were destroyed by the Indian Ocean tsunami.
The discovery of the Gurgaon operation comes six weeks after an underworld trade in kidneys was uncovered in the Phillipines where in return for £1,000 - a huge amount in a country where 15million people earn 50p a day - "volunteers" donated an organ to a wealthy foreigner.
Snopes isn’t always right. The bulk of their older legends were stolen from Jan Brunvand who has done the proper leg work for decades on exposing urban legends.
Snopes is run by a couple of lefties. While the tale of waking up in a tub of ice may be UL lore, there are rings that deal in such contraband.
Just as there are slaves in America today.
Imagine that. A soft underbelly.
Wow, thanks for the info.
Yes, I realized my comment was based on an urban legend, but I couldn’t pass up mentioning it based on the actual story posted. I would think the NYT story is true...hopefully they have not become so lazy as to use urban myths as actual reports.
As far as conservatives are concerned, they've been doing that for years.
Snopes is often wrong. I wrote to correct them some years ago about their denial of the existence of snuff films. I pointed out that they were all over the internet and usually included hooded men beheading a bound captive while chanting Allahu akbar. I even steered them to a couple of links, but I never heard back from them.
Organjackers.
Gil of the A. R. M. is coming for you......
That is too good. Yet true.
I think that's *organleggers*, no? in any case, great stories!
That’s funny maglsinger. I did the exact same thing a couple years ago. Never heard back from them either.
Indians turn to Pakistan for organ transplants
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Indians_turn_to_Pak_for_organ_transplant/articleshow/2742114.cms
NEW DELHI: It appears that the trade in illegal organ transplants is a thriving one in the subcontinent. In a disturbing trend, several hospitals in Delhi have complained about Indian patients going to Pakistan for kidney transplants and returning with severe complications.
“The trend started two years ago. In the last year alone, we got six patients who had gone to Pakistan for transplants and returned with complications. All these cases came in days after the patient returned,’’ said Dr Vijay Kher of the department of renal transplant at Fortis Hospital in a recent interview.
Dr Kher added that six patients came in a critical state. Out of the six, two were from Delhi, two from Punjab and two from Uttaranchal. Two of them later died due to complications.
According to reports in the foreign media, many patients make their way into Pakistan as the country offers a “cheap kidney bazaar.” There too, incidents of kidney selling by the poor are rampant, and as a result, transplant tourism is a thriving trade.
Fortis Hospital sources added that most patients from India didn’t even know whose kidney they had received in Pakistan. “Kidney transplants are done only after a cross-match test confirms that the recipient can take the donor’s kidney. Else, the body rejects the kidney. Over 1,20,000 people suffer renal failure in India every year, however, not more than 4,000 transplants are done. The gap is huge, and everyday there are tens who die of renal failure,” added Dr Kher.
Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in the Capital also reported a similar trend. “In the past two years, I must have seen around 15 patients who returned with complications after having undergone a kidney transplant in Pakistan. Some patients come back with infection, pus, surgical complications and even with kidney rejection. In certain cases I had to remove the kidney of the patient upon their return,” said Dr Harsha Jauhari, chairman, transplant surgery, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. Dr Jauhari added that a transplant in Pakistan also costs a lot more than it does in India. “Whereas in India it turns out to be around Rs 3.5 lakh, in Pakistan it’s almost double the amount,” he said.
Dr Sandeep Guleria of AIIMS reiterated the point made by Jauhari. Most medical complications according to him arose because the patients were discharged within days of the transplant as visa restrictions wouldn’t allow them to stay for long.
“As they don’t get time to recuperate, they fall prey to infections. Besides, till now there was an absence of an act in Pakistan which could perhaps do what Human Organs Transplant Act has done for India. However, apparently a similar legislation was passed recently and all transplants will have to be authorised now,” said Dr Guleria. He added that not all cases developed complications.
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