Los(t) Angeles : The "Organ Mafia" strikes again
by
Hector Carreon
La Voz de AztlanLos Angeles, Alta California - September 27, 2005 - (ACN) The USA human organ transplant industry has putrefied to the core. It is now under the control of an "Organ Mafia" consisting of "cadaver hunters", surgeons, nurses and hospital administrators whose sole purpose is to maximize their profits by selling transplantable organs and tissues to the highest bidder. The ultimate victims are indigent patients who are often bypassed for needed transplants and poor and needy persons who are often victimized by the "organ snatchers" when their organs are purchased and often stolen for use by wealthy patients.
Last year we reported on the "UCLA's Cadaver Scandal and Trade in Human Organs" which shocked Angelenos. The scandal resulted in an investigation of the UCLA Medical Center that focused in finding out who was involved, over a period of six years, in profiting in the sale of body parts. Arrested, along with UCLA's Director Henry Reid, was Ernest Nelson, body parts dealer who says he paid Reid over $700,000 for permission to go into the UCLA body freezer and hack about 800 donated cadavers into pieces to take their parts and sell them to local hospitals and laboratories. Today, yet another organ scandal has been revealed involving the bypassing of an Afro-American patient for a "liver transplant" who was first on the list. Instead, the "liver" was transplanted into a very influential and wealthy Saudi who was only 52nd on the list but paid large sums of money to St. Vincent Medical Center through the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia .
St. Vincent Medical Center is just east of downtown Los Angeles and is one of the largest human organ transplant centers in California. The abuse was carried out by the "Organ Mafia" inside the hospital by falsifying records and documents. The Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia paid the hospital $340,000 directly and above board and undetermined sums to doctors and hospital staff under the table.
The horrific trade in transplantable body organs, tissues and other parts has had dire consequences for some of society’s most vulnerable members. Among the vulnerable are the homeless, undocumented immigrants, and Mexican children along the US/Mexico border. During the "UCLA's Cadaver Scandal" hundreds of homeless persons, mostly Blacks, were mysteriously disappearing from the Los Angeles downtown "Skid Row" area that is not very far from UCLA. Since the UCLA Medical Center’s "Organ Mafia" got away with trafficking in body parts by keeping some of the donated cadavers off the books, the center may have been accepting cadavers that they never recorded. A cadaver or human body can bring in as much as $200,000 dollars. It is possible that many of the disappeared "Skid Row" indigents ended up in the UCLA cadaver freezer.
The USA "Organ Mafia" now operates on an international level. Their favorite targets are countries where "the dollar" speaks the loudest. A favorite region for organ snatching operations is along the US/Mexico border. In 1996 I wrote an article title, "THE CORRUPTIVE INFLUENCE OF THE DOLLAR: The Shameful Trade in Mexican Baby Organs!" that revealed 17 clinics in Tijuana and Cd. Juarez that performed sophisticated transplants of kidneys and corneal tissues from kidnapped Mexican children to wealthy North Americans who paid top prices for the operations. Mexican children along the border continue to disappear today. In Cd. Juarez, hundreds of young women have disappeared as well. One theory claims that these women are being murdered for their transplantable organs.
There is very little publicity concerning the human right abuses of the well established "Organ Mafia". Members of this Mafia now include many greedy doctors and surgeons operating in prestigious USA hospitals. The high demand for human organs by wealthy patients willing to pay high prices will continue to victimize the poor. The recent fraud at St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles that "gypped" an indigent Black patient to benefit a wealthy Saudi national is just one of numerous cases. According to promoters of the 2003 film titled "Dirty Pretty Things" that exposed the trade in human organs, "An estimated 15,000 illegal organ transplants have been performed worldwide in recent years, usually involving wealthy Westerners and the Third World's marginalized poor who sell their organs, most often kidneys, to stay alive (survive economically)."
Related La Voz de Aztlan articles:THE CORRUPTIVE INFLUENCE OF THE DOLLAR: The Shameful Trade in Mexican Baby Organs!
UCLA's Cadaver Scandal and Trade in Human Organs
Is Israel harvesting organs of Palestinian youths?
