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Date: Thu, 15 Sep 1994 15:46:14 -0500 (CDT)
From: mike.holloway@mbcf.stjude.org (Mike Holloway)
Subject: Re: She spiked me drink and stole my kidneys for the Black Market

>Do you have any additional material other than what is archived at cathouse.org
>in the /pub/cathouse/urban.legends/medical/organ.theft directory?

Just received this from Todd Leventhal. Its a very good analysis of a very bad film which has no doubt had a big effect on propagating the organ theft urban legend. Can you include it in the archive please?

Mike Holloway
mike.holloway@stjude.org

The following is an analysis of the most glaring flaws in the program:

The British/Canadian television program "The Body Parts Business" was broadcast in Britain on November 21, 1993 and in Canada on November 22, 1993. It was produced by Judy Jackson of Alma Associates Ontario. Ltd. in Toronto, Canada, and narrated by Bruce Harris, who works for Covenant House in Central America. The program was funded by the British Broadcasting Corporation, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the Canadian National Film Board.

The program examines alleged organ and tissue trafficking abuses in Guatemala, Honduras, Argentina, and Russia.

With regard to Guatemala, the program claims that the only person who investigated organ trafficking rumors was murdered, giving the frightening impression that anyone who investigates these allegations in Guatemala is at severe risk.

This claim is not accurate. There has been several investigations of organ trafficking allegations in Guatemala since 1986 and the people involved remain quite alive. It is also worth noting that they found no evidence of child organ trafficking.

For example, in the November 18, 1988 issue of Guatemala's "Diariode Centro America", then Guatemalan President Cerezo stated: "The Guatemalan government has made serious and thorough investigations on the trafficking of babies and it has been concluded that the rumors on the 'butchering' of babies are false."

Furthermore, in 1987 and 1988, when child organ trafficking charges erupted in the Guatemalan press, the U.S. embassy in Guatemala contacted the Guatemalan authorities to see if they had anyinformation to back up the claims that were circulating in the media. They did not. In both years, the Guatemalan authorities stated that they had absolutely no evidence that would substantiate the organ trafficking claims.

In February 1987, the chief of the Guatemalan Treasury Police,Colonel Guillermo Echeverria Vielman, stated that he had "no indication" that children were being used as organ donors. Subsequently, Baudillo Hichos Lopez, the chief of the narcotics and intelligence section of the Treasury Police at the time, who had been quoted in the press as claiming that child organ trafficking existed, stated, in a letter to the U.S. public affairs officer, "I never made [those] scandalous and compromising statements."

In 1988, after new allegations of child organ trafficking had arisen, Oscar Augusto Dias Urquizi, Director General of the Treasury Police stated, on January 29, 1988: "the institution which I direct has no proof, evidence, or indication that Guatemalan children are being sent to the United States, or to any other country, to be dismembered and used as organ donors."

By failing to mention any of these Guatemalan government investigations of this issue, "The Body Parts Business" gives the misleading impression that these allegations are too dangerous to examine.

In the next section of "The Body Parts Business," on Honduras, the program includes the claim of eight year old Charlie Alvarado that he was kidnapped by foreigners who wanted to sell his organs, butluckily escaped after five days. But the program fails to include other important information that indicates that Alvarado's claim was a hoax.

Spiegel Television in Germany also examined the Charlie Alvarado case and allegations of child organ trafficking in Honduras, which were rampant in April 1993. According to the June 20, 1993 Spiegel television broadcast, an investigation of Alvarado's claims by the Honduran courts "revealed that Charlie's story was a fabrication." Alvarado could not remember the day on which he was allegedly kidnapped, he had no bruises from the ropes with which he claimed to have been tied, and the two foreign workers he accused of kidnapping him were released. "The Body Parts Business" includes none of this information, which is essential in order to properly evaluate Alvarado's claims.

The third section of "The Body Parts Business" examines Argentina. It highlights the case of Pedro Reggi, who claims that his corneas were forcibly removed when he was a patient at the Montes de Ocamental institution in Argentina. Shortly after the television program aired in November 1993, Reggi repudiated this claim. According to the November 27, 1993 issue of the Argentine newspaper "Pagina 12", Reggi "denied his statements" on the "Hora Clave" television program in Argentina.

Subsequently, the Reggi case was investigated. In a December 6,1993 letter to the director of Argentina's national opthalmology hospital, Dr. Patricia Rey stated that Reggi suffered from "bilateral congenital cataracts" as an infant, and in the mid 1980s suffered from nystagmus (a rhythymic oscillation of the eyeballs)in both eyes, the cornea of his right eye contained "intraparenchymatous deposits" and showed "peripheral neovascularization," and his left eye showed a "regenerative cataract." Surgery to try to improve visual acuity was abandoned in 1985 when it was observed that in his left eye "the anterior chamber was filled and the cornea was infiltrated."

In short, Reggi's severe visual problems would have made him a singularly unlikely person to have his corneas used to restore thesight of others. Instead, what the evidence indicates is that Reggi's claims in "The Body Parts Business" were a fabrication andthat he lost his vision due to naural causes.

According to the article in the November 27, 1993 issue of "Pagina12", the director of the Argentine Transplant Society, the director of the Argentine National Institute of Ablations and Implants, and the other top Argentine transplant authorities stated emphatically that "an organ market doesn't exist in Argentina" and stated what "The Body Parts Business" claimed, with regard to Argentina, was "a lie." They also noted that accusations of improper transplant activities in Cordoba had "caused a 90 percent decrease in [organ]donors" in that area.

On November 23, 1993, an article in "Pagina 12" cited Argentine Minister of Health Julio Cesar Araoz as stating, "I cannot claim with certainty if traffikcing in organs really existed...." Araozalso noted that Juan Martin Romero Victorica, who had led the investigations of Montes de Oca, explicitly stated "the allegations were studied carefully, but no positive results were found in any of the cases." The Argentine Foreign Ministry also issued a statement that no evidence of organ trafficking had been produced.

The final section of "The Body Parts Business" deals with Russia and uncritically cites a Russian police lieutenant who believes that people have been kidnapped for organ transplantation, although he admits that he has no evidence for this. The program does not mention that false rumors of child organ trafficking have been widespread in Russia since 1988, and claims of such practices need to be evaluated in this context.

In sum, the most sensational revelations in "The Body Parts Business," with regard to Honduras and Argentina, turn out, oncloser examination, to be hoaxes. With regard to Guatemala and Russia, the program conveys a fundamentally misleading impressiondue to factual inaccuracies and unwarranted innuendo. It contains no credible evidence of child organ trafficking.