Urban Angst

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Kidney Theft

This UL exists in many variants. Often the guy picked up a prostitute and she stole the kidney. Often a note is left by the body instructing the finder to call a doctor. The city in question also varies, often being the nearest big city of consequence or associated with a convention city like Las Vegas or an event like the Superbowl.

As far as anyone can tell, such a crime has never been reported in any Western country. Nor is it likely that anyone would ever try this. The combination of the difficulties of matching a proper donor with the recipient and harvesting and transplanting the organ, coupled with the fact that dialysis makes resorting to such desperate measures unnecessary, makes such a crime pretty much unnecessary.

There has been at least one such claim in India, where sale of spare organs such as kidneys was then legal. However, it appears that this claim was from a man who sold his kidney willingly and then tried to extort more money from the doctor after the fact by claiming theft.

An interesting variant is the belief circulating in many developing countries that American/European couples seeking to adopt children are actually organ hunters. Again, there is no evidence to support such beliefs.

There is no evidence for the existence of a black market for human organs in any Western nation, and ULs such as this feed suspicion of legitimate organ transplant services and make it more difficult for such services to acquire organs from legitimate donors.

Debunked: Guy visiting the Big City wakes up in a bathtub full of ice and in pain--a kidney has been stolen from him!

References:

• http://tafkac.org/medical/organ.theft/organ_theft_unos.html
• http://tafkac.org/medical/organ.theft/baby.parts/baby_parts_myth.html
• http://tafkac.org/medical/organ.theft/baby.parts/guatemalan_baby_snatchers.html