Trading Organs
   Date :30-Jun-2019

 
“Kidney racket is a long-term problem in India and many other parts of the developing world where the population is high and demand for organs is thus high, while donors are comparatively much fewer.”

 
“It is an unfortunate reality in India that by the lure of money or by sheer cheating, several innocent people are made to lose their kidney. It has grown into a real profitable business for medical professionals. Just the sale of one kidney can fetch in money which can be earned in eight years of normal practice.”
 
OVER a dozen leading private surgeons, including top urologists of Delhi are under the scanner of Uttar Pradesh Police in connection with a sensational international kidney transplant racket, spread across Turkey and the Middle East countries. So far, 13 people, including CEO of Pushpawati Singhania Research Institute (PSRI) Dr Deepak Shukla have been arrested. Two leading doctors of a hospital have been served notice in the kidney racket. The investigation against another leading hospital located in central Delhi is underway and more arrests are likely to be made in the case which has sent ripples across the medical fraternity. The police said poor people were being cheated by doctors and hospital administration through an organised chain of middlemen.
 
Dr Ketan Kaushik, a key accused in the case, reportedly brought patients for kidney transplants from countries like Turkey, UAE and other places in the Middle East. Different groups were operating in different regions. The racket operated like a well-organised crime syndicate. For instance, the international clientele was approached by a different set of people while local kidney donors were trapped by touts already operating in the human organs transplant racket. The police sources said that there was enough evidence to prove that the accused removed kidneys of at least 12 donors for a huge amount of money taken from the recipients’ family. After extracting the kidneys, donors were paid just Rs 2 or 3 lakhs while recipients were charged Rs 70 to Rs 80 lakh per transplant.
 
Dr Kaushik was found to be handling international clientele for the group. The racket which has sent shock waves amongst country’s medical professionals could see some more leading doctors being rounded up by the police in a few days time, sources added. Kidney racket is a long-term problem in India and many other parts of the developing world where the population is high and demand for organs is thus high, while donors are comparatively much fewer. In Madhya Pradesh and Bhopal in specific, an extensive kidney racket made news a few years back and many doctors were found to be involved in it. The probes in these cases often remain inconclusive and most of the culprits escape the clutches of the law due to their access and resources. It is an unfortunate reality in India that by the lure of money or by sheer cheating, several innocent people are made to lose their kidney.
 
It has grown into a real profitable business for medical professionals. Just the sale of one kidney can fetch in money which can be earned in eight years of normal practice. General poverty in the majority of people in the country and lack of availability of organs are taken undue advantage of. In India, organ donation is a low priority for most people and thus the demand is always spiralling. More the demand, the more precious a thing becomes and more money it fetches. Though not all doctors can be blamed of the taint it is true that there is a substantial number of them involved in such criminal activities behind the veil of their ‘noble’ profession.
 
Trading organs for their monetary value is legally banned in India but these incidents show it is rampantly prevalent. It cannot be a doing of a handful of doctors unless several of them are handling different aspects of it, along with political nexuses. Wherever there is huge money involved, intricate nexuses happen between different shareholders of the profit. This is one reason why these operations are not easily located and the culprits caught. It takes years to track the developments and get at the people, who are actually involved, and then, it takes another set of eons for the cases to be resolved and the culprits jailed. This lack of conviction or low conviction rate and delayed justice emboldens the wrongdoers and the crimes continue. Doctors in the country complain of being ‘insecure’ and claim to be victims of patients’ ire but it is not for nothing that people have so much mistrust in doctors – and the acrimony and mistrust are only growing.
 
There cannot be an end to it unless doctors honour their profession and are honest with their patients. As long as there is even one dead fish in the pond, the pond is impure. This holds true for the medical profession. If there are doctors who are a blot on the nobility of the profession, then there must be developed a mechanism by the medical council or the Government to weed them out or better, stop such ‘criminals’ from entering the profession in the first place. More important for doctors than saving their life is to save the honour of the profession and the service they vow to render to the people. We all know how private hospitals and doctors in India fleece patients in the name of unnecessary tests and several other hidden costs which the gullible patient pays through his nose, selling his property and assets. We all know how medical costs are inflated and how even the simplest of OPD checkups at a private facility cost a bomb.
 
 
We have instances of doctors denying treatment without first having their fees in hand. Most private hospitals don’t even admit a patient without first having a certain amount of money deposited at the cash counter, and that is often a handsome amount that is asked for. There are instances where a patient’s stay in the hospital is prolonged for no reason, but to make money. Cheap business interests are overruling humanitarian commitments. These are all instances of cheating, negligence and criminal propensities because the whole scheme has an underlying pattern that is a sheer robbery of people’s hard earned money. Kidney racket and other organ rackets are only an extension of this same propensity of duping people and making easy money.
 
 
We all know doctors work under immense pressure in India. They have to work under difficult circumstances in the Government setups and in remote rural areas. They often have poor equipment and facilities at their disposal which impede the best treatment to a patient they can ideally offer. Patient burden per doctor is one of the highest in the world here. Despite all this, there is no justification for doctors in yanking off people’s kidneys to satiate their own pecuniary greed. There can be no reason or excuse for this. This is sheer burglary and the wrongdoers are criminals in the garb of doctors, for a real doctor can never forget his professional ethics. By the way, the most stringent of punishments must be meted out to these criminal ‘doctors’ and all those involved in the rackets who ruin the lives of hundreds and thousands of poor people by deceit.