Is there a profit in kidney transplantation?

You bet your booty - but note how little of it goes to the donor...

“Even by New Jersey standards, Thursday’s roundup of three mayors, five rabbis and 36 others on charges of money laundering and public corruption was big. But what put this FBI dragnet head and shoulders above the rest are the charges of trafficking in human body parts.

According to a federal criminal complaint filed in district court in New Jersey, Levy Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn conspired to broker the sale of a human kidney for a transplant. The cost was $160,000 to the recipient of the transplant, of which the donor got $10,000. According to the complaint, Mr. Rosenbaum said he had brokered such sales many times over the past 10 years.”

I have felt for many years that a system could be set up to allow responsible people to sell their body organs for transplant on an open market system. It's done all the time, but it's done sub rosa, and the public doesn't hear about it. If it were brought into the open and legitimized, the process would be better (and safer) for all involved.