The couple, the parents of two teenagers, put their organs up for sale on a local online classified site six months ago after Mr. Mircov, 50, lost his job at a meat factory here. He has not been able to find any work, he said, so he has grown desperate. When his father recently died, Mr. Mircov could not afford a tombstone. The telephone service has been cut off. One meal a day of bread and salami is the family’s only extravagance.
“When you need to put food on the table, selling a kidney doesn’t seem like much of a sacrifice,” Mr. Mircov said.
Facing grinding poverty, some Europeans are seeking to sell their
kidneys, lungs, bone marrow or corneas, experts say. This phenomenon is
relatively new in Serbia, a nation that has been battered by war and is
grappling with the financial crisis that has swept the Continent. The
spread of illegal organ sales into Europe, where they are gaining
momentum, has been abetted by the Internet, a global shortage of organs
for transplants and, in some cases, unscrupulous traffickers ready to
exploit the economic misery.
In Spain, Italy, Greece and Russia, advertisements by people peddling
organs — as well as hair, sperm and breast milk — have turned up on the
Internet, with asking prices for lungs as high as $250,000.
In late May,
the Israeli police detained 10 members of an international crime ring
suspected of organ trafficking in Europe, European Union law enforcement
officials said. The officials said the suspects had targeted
impoverished people in Moldova, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
“Organ trafficking is a growth industry,” said Jonathan Ratel, a
European Union special prosecutor who is leading a case against seven
people accused of luring poor victims from Turkey and former communist
countries to Kosovo to sell their kidneys with false promises of
payments of up to $20,000. “Organized criminal groups are preying upon
the vulnerable on both sides of the supply chain: people suffering from
chronic poverty, and desperate and wealthy patients who will do anything
to survive.”
The main supply countries have traditionally been China, India, Brazil
and the Philippines. But experts say Europeans are increasingly
vulnerable.
An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 kidneys are illegally sold globally each
year, according to Organs Watch, a human rights group in Berkeley,
Calif., that tracks the illegal organ trade. The World Health
Organization estimates that only 10 percent of global needs for organ
transplantation are being met.
Nancy Scheper-Hughes, the director of Organs Watch and a professor of
medical anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, said the
attempt by poor Europeans to sell their organs was reminiscent of the
period after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when chronic joblessness
created a new breed of willing sellers.
Trade in organs in Serbia is illegal and punishable by up to 10 years in
prison. But that is not deterring the people of Doljevac, a poor
municipality of 19,000 people in southern Serbia, where the government
refused an attempt by residents to register a local agency to sell their
organs and blood abroad for profit.
Violeta Cavac, a homemaker advocating for the network, said that the
unemployment rate in Doljevac was 50 percent and that more than 3,000
people had wanted to participate. Deprived of a legal channel to sell
their organs, she said, residents are now trying to sell body parts in
neighboring Bulgaria or in Kosovo.
“I will sell my kidney, my liver, or do anything necessary to survive,” she said.
Hunched over his computer in Kovin, about 25 miles from Belgrade, Mr.
Mircov showed a reporter his kidney-for-sale advertisement, which
included his blood type and phone number.
“Must sell kidney. Blood group A,” the ad said. “My financial situation
is very difficult. I lost my job, and I need money for school for my two
children.”
After six months of advertising, Mr. Mircov said, his days are
punctuated by hope and disappointment. He said a man from Mannheim,
Germany, had offered to fly him to Germany and cover the transplant
costs. But when Mr. Mircov tried to follow up, he said, the man
disappeared.
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