Intercountry adoption & the trade in organs?

Mid February the UN held their first Conference on the trafficking of human beings. Trafficking for sexual or labour exploitation, and for adoption, false marriage and human organ donation is believed to be the third largest illegal trade in the world after drugs and arms smuggling.


It was longtime denied that trafficking for organs happened for real, and especially a possible link with intercountry adoption was fiercefully denied by the adoption lobby.


But it may well be the sad reality:

There is also considerable evidence that infants and young children are kidnapped for the adoption market. At the same time, older girls and boys are sold or kidnapped (again, the relative percentages are unknown) for the sex trade. If children are abducted for adoption or for sexual exploitation, it is argued, it seems logical that they are abducted also for their organs. Although this charge has not been proven, it does contribute to a more general suspicion of organ donation and transplantation.

When writing the book I hesitated to address this issue, but I did. Read page 156:

• Monday, 25 May 2003
  According to the Italian press trade in babies is taking place in Italy. Young women and girls from Eastern Europe, not so far by sea, were persuaded to come to Italy under the promises of jobs, but often ended up being illegal and sold into prostitution. According to the Italian priest Father Cesare Lo Deserto, their babies, mistakes of their profession, were prey to the criminal gangs. When for adoption, children would go to Western couples with the money and contacts to bypass official waiting lists. In the case or organs, such as livers and corneas, the destination would often be privately run clinics in Israel and Turkey.
• 
  Were abandoned children trafficked for their body parts?
• I have long-time not really wanted to hear about it. But the more I read, the more I worry.
• The ‘baby parts’ rumour probably arose spontaneously as an ‘urban legend,’ a false but widely believed form of modern folklore. That is according to the US government’s info website.
• But a fresh report of the Rapporteur of the Council of Europe’s Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee says differently: worldwide, the issue of organ trafficking is not so new. In the 1980s experts began to notice what was to become known as ‘transplant tourism’ when prosperous Asians began travelling to India and other parts of Southeast Asia to receive organs from poor donors. Since then other routes have opened up, such as to Brazil and the Philippines. Allegations are made against China of commercial use of organs from executed prisoners. Organ sale continues in India despite new laws, which make the practice illegal in most regions. Organ trafficking, like most criminal activities, is difficult to prove. But it should not be left to the media alone to investigate. According to this Rapporteur, the Member States of the Council of Europe have a common responsibility to deal openly with this problem nationally, but also through multilateral co-operation at the European level.
• 
  It is most likely not without reason that Europol’s definition of child abuse refers not only to sexual abuse, prostitution, forced labour, kidnapping, parental abduction, ritual killing and illegal adoption, but also to the trade in abandoned children and the trade in organs. That probably means such abuses exist. So why would Romania’s abandoned children not have been victims of such crimes?

And now read this:

• Saturday, 31 March 2001
• In private many people admitted it was not easy for Romanians to adopt and the healthy children were ‘saved’ for abroad. The selection of children by foreigners was sometimes very thorough. The Israeli, for example, were nicknamed ‘the vampires’ as they took blood samples of adoptable children, which were analysed in Israel before they were accepted.

And this

Romania probes Israeli adoption agency link in organ trafficking

A rumour... that probably arose spontaneously as an ‘urban legend’, a false but widely believed form of modern folklore, according to the US State Department.

I truly hope so.