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5.10.2009

Jobless Spaniards sell kidneys to transplant tourists

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6257054.ece
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c52/paruvers2/kidney_sales_sm.jpg
A MACABRE traffic associated with poor countries in Asia and Latin America has sprung up for the first time in western Europe as the credit crunch reduces Spaniards to selling organs to “transplant tourists”.
Spanish “kidney for sale” advertisements have proliferated recently on the internet as people struggle to make ends meet in a country whose 17% unemployment rate is the highest in Europe.
Sergio, a 42-year-old welder and father of four, said he had received an offer of £20,000 from a German couple who needed his kidney for their five-year-old son. If tests showed them to be compatible, an operation would be performed in a “third country” since such transactions are illegal in Europe.
“Apparently, there’s a waiting list of at least five years for a kidney in Germany,” he told a television programme, “but in five years the kid will be dead.”
[...]
“The bank is on my back,” he said. “If I could think of some other way of raising the money, believe me, I would.”
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