Studies of its statistics show that in 1997, one person has waited on an average of 477 days for a positive liver donor (Watkins, 2005 in Kaserman & Barnett, supra note6, at 33); imagine how gruesome it is to spend a year and a half wondering if there’s ever going to donate. The possibility of having a longer and enjoyable life lies in the hands of a possible donor. Many eventually die while waiting for their benefactors.
There are plenty who might be available to donate but the reasons vary according to personal choices and decisions (Watkins, 2005 in Kaserman 2002). On the other hand, Batchelder’s study in Organs, Commodities, Technologies (2005), revealed that many anthropologists made documentations on the said international trading of human organs. Anthropologist Scheper-Hughes made the tracking of these worldwide operations through the NGO University of California –based Organ Watch.
Why the upsurge of trading occurred, these experts found out that the discovery of the immuno-suppressant pharmaceutical drug called Cyclosporine was the main factor. It made transplantation more viable for majority of patients worldwide. This NGO documented indicated that countries like “Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Israel, Turkey, South Africa, the United States, the United Kingdom and India” are somehow, one way or another, engaged in organ harvesting.
These also show that abuses were also made in this connection (Batchelder, 2005). More pathetic is the fact that those who are most at risk of these illegal and dangerous operations are those who can defend themselves the least. They are into the business not exactly cognizant of the dire physiological consequences. For donors of ova, sperm and plasma who do not physically suffer the effects, the risk of death and other physiological consequences in organ transplants is high.
In a paper by Baruch (2005), he said that “donating a solid organ is a riskier venture” which consists of immense pain, other possible complications, “the permanent absence of a body part and potential long-term medical and psychological sequelae” (Baruch, 2005). With such facts, how come doctors and professionals in the medical profession are still mum about the occurrence of the trade? If they care about those who maybe needing the organ, why not care equally about those who seemed naive but because they are poor, subject themselves to such a dangerous contract as organ donation?
In the Nuremburg code 1947 which was drawn based on the event that an incident like the Holocaust or where the treatment of prisoners were inhumane will not be duplicated. In it was stipulated in clear and implied terms that persons or individuals who have the least ability to protect themselves by virtue of their financial, psychological, physical inadequacies should thus be fully protected by law and upheld by an international court of law (Baruch, 2005 in Trials of War Criminals, 1949).