U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

New Form of International Crime: The Human Organ Trade

NCJ Number
162604
Journal
International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice Volume: 19 Issue: 1 Dated: (Spring 1995) Pages: 1-18
Author(s)
D H Chang
Date Published
1995
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This article examines the trading of human organs and how it relates to the criminological theories of anomie and the theory of organized crime, and offers possible solutions.
Abstract
India has become known as the organ capital of the world, because its large population of poor people is a ready source of organs for sale; there are hospitals and clinics that will perform transplant operations for other than humanitarian reasons; and business-minded middlemen are ready to bring recipients, donors, and clinics together for profit. Legitimate organ procurement agencies and the medical community must adopt new strategies to increase the supply of transplantable organs by encouraging more individuals and families to donate organs and by compensating them, in ways other than cash payments, for so doing. One controversial strategy is the doctrine of presumed consent, whereby a hospital or organ clinic could harvest organs for transplant unless such action has been explicitly forbidden by the patient prior to death or the patient's family after death. References, appendix