The latest paper in our E-Paper series Blueprints deals with the subject „Bankbook Bodies: The Billion Dollar Business with Organ Trade – The Development of International Legal Measures and the Effectiveness in Curtailing the Black Market“.

Organ trafficking is one of the world’s top ten illicit money-making activities, generating an estimated US$ 1,2 billion in illegal profits globally, every year. The transplantation of human organs as a life-saving measure has become a routine operation, and as the demand for human organs exceeds the natural, legal supply, the black market fills in the gap. Legal measures concerned with commercial transplants, trafficking in human beings for the purpose of organ removal, and the illicit removal of organs have shown a tendency over time to become ever stricter, banking on prohibition and criminalization. The black market, however, has not diminished but rather continued to flourish. If it is to be successfully curtailed, a new multi-tiered approach should be employed. Laws which are necessary and sensible must be enforced. Simultaneously, though, there has to be the political will, courage and flexibility to adjust those laws that have proven ineffectual.

You can read the paper directly here.

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