"Who's Got the Knife? The Role of  Surgeons in Transplant Trafficking."

Speaker: Dr. Nancy Scheper Hughes, University of California, Berkeley

Abstract

On October 27, 2011Levy Itzhak Rosenbaum, a well-connected international transplantbroker, pleaded guilty in a Trenton, NJ federal courtroom to threecounts of organizing the sale and transfer of kidneys purchased  from  poor Israelis who  were trafficked  into the USto supply the needs of  American transplantpatients. He also pleaded guilty to conspiracy.  ButRosenbaum, responsible for more than a hundred illegal transplants fromNew York City to California, stood alone in the courtroom. With whomdid the broker conspire?  This lecture, based on15 years of ethnographic and investigative research into  international criminal networks of transplant  trafficking , compares state and criminal justice responsesin  concurrent and linked  prosecutionsin  Brazil, South Africa, Moldova, Turkey, andKosovo. In these cases, in addition to the universally reviled ‘organsbrokers’ and their assistant  kidney hunters,the accused in the courtrooms have included blood technicians, hospitaladministrators, medical insurance executives, the kidney buyers (recipients), translators, travel agents, nurses, safe house operators, and transplant  surgeons  andnurses who were charged with organized crime, human trafficking, fraud,contravening organ and tissue laws.  Some  served stiff prison sentences  whileothers paid steep financial penalties in exchange for turning state’switness . Only in South Africa, however, were transplant  surgeons initially  charged with‘assault with a deadly weapon” harming the bodies of  traffickedkidney sellers, some of whom were minors. Drawing on key informantinterviews with the  surgeons involved  in these complicated transactions, I will explorethe moral reasoning, defense, and the limits of responsibility andculpability of transplant surgeons who, knowingly or not,  filled the role of  bystander,witness, collaborator,  facilitator, organizer  or victim of international transplant trafficking.(My title is not an allusion to the detective game “Clue”, but to thechallenge raised by a Europol detective to transplant surgeons at a UNmeeting on combating the traffic in humans for organs).