WRI 101/102
Section
The issue of organ transplant has become a complex and delicate matter because it has been linked to illegal international organ trafficking, organ theft and gross human rights violations. The issue can best be understood if examined within the social context in which it takes place. In her essay “Truth and Rumor on the Organ Trail,” Nancy Scheper Highes, a medical anthropologist, explores the social and economic contexts of organ transplant in Brazil, South Africa and India. Her essay first appeared in Natural History (1998). She notes that the issue of organ transplant is particularly controversial in these countries because the great majority of poor vulnerable citizens associate this practice with child abductions for organ removal to favor the rich, with human rights violations and with pressure on the poor to sell their organs. While she states that these rumors are largely unfounded, they are deeply engrained in people’s perceptions and contribute to foster negative attitudes toward organ transplants and organ donations. The underprivileged see that only the wealthy benefit from such transplants at their expense or to the detriment of loved ones. Since her article reports on the findings of the Belagio Task Force on Transplantation, Bodily Integrity and the International Traffic in Organs, her article is of interest to the medical profession, human rights advocates, and social scientists among others.
After reading the article, the reader gains a clearer understanding of the complexities surrounding organ transplants and organ donations. The role of economics governing organ transplant is especially clear in the cases of Brazil and South Africa. In Brazil the government came under such pressure that it declared all citizens universal donors unless they explicitly declared themselves non-donors. In India the government put in place certain loopholes to allow donors who have an affective relationship with the recipient to be approved as donors, even when the more desirable practice is that the donor and recipient be blood related. Scheper Hughes also sensitizes the reader to the reasons underlying poor South Africans’ perception of organ transplants and donations. It could not be otherwise since these people see that the wealthy seem to be the ones that benefit the most from this scientific advancement.
As for the belief of a widespread international organ traffic in these countries, while this practice was most prominent in the case of China, she points that even in this country the vast majority of sales were domestic; that many organ sales in India and Brazil are also largely domestic. Perhaps she could have supplied more figures of international organ sales in India, Brazil and India to put the Chinese case in a more balance perspective, since the press contributes to the perception that there is a huge organ sale in China when in reality the levels may be the same as in the other countries examined.
