Can you sell kidneys

Behind each is a tale of individual woe — joblessness, debt, a family emergency — in a country beset by economic despair. In fact, Iran offers people a legal way to sell their kidneys — and is the only country in the world to do so. Since , doctors in Iran have performed more than 30, kidney transplants this way. Sellers have learned that they can cut side deals to earn up to thousands more from well-off Iranians eager to bypass the roughly yearlong wait for a transplant under the government system, or foreigners barred from the national program.

In recent years, doctors have been caught attempting to perform transplants for Saudis who obtained forged Iranian IDs. Iranian authorities say their system gives poor people a relatively safe way to make some money while saving lives, keeping surgery costs low and reducing transplant waiting times in a country where, until recently, few organs were harvested from people who died.

The end result is good for the recipient and the donor. But some international transplant leaders point to the advertisements as evidence that commercializing organ donations preys on the neediest people — the very thing that laws in the U. If I could sell my kidney, I could get out of debt. I would sell my liver too. No one can say how many of the street ads are answered. Rezaei, whose half-rimmed glasses and dress shirt give him the appearance of a white-collar salaryman, once made enough to support a middle-class life for his wife and two children.

But that changed after he was hired to supply air conditioners as part of the giant Mehr public housing project, which was launched by then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to build affordable apartments for low-income families.

When many of the apartments failed to sell — because of shoddy construction and accelerating inflation — some developers fled Iran, leaving their subcontractors unpaid. He was jailed for bouncing a check, borrowed money for bail, then was rearrested three months ago for failing to pay back the loan. Rezaei considered signing up to sell his kidney through government channels, but his brother-in-law needed the money back immediately. Or he would link up with an Iranian buyer and pose as a friend or relative, hoping to speed up the surgery.

Rezaei returned the next morning to ensure his ad was still there. He found that another seller had added his number to the page in red marker, and a third had attached his using small blue stickers.

A year-old smoker with swept-back gray hair and a trimmed mustache, he had lost his small poultry business and had fallen tens of thousands of dollars into debt. The day we place an ad on the wall, someone comes and pastes over it. Instead of doing something illegal to cover their debts, like stealing or smuggling, they are saving a life first. This is not exploitation.

Most people can live healthy lives with just one of their two kidneys. Email questions and comments to him at RonSEsq aol. Can you sell your organs for money? Ask the lawyer. Q: Just who can donate organs in the U. Can it be a non-resident? Sign up for The Localist, our daily email newsletter with handpicked stories relevant to where you live. Subscribe here. You are also required to meet with a psychologist and an Independent Living Donor Advocate to be sure you are mentally and emotionally ready to donate one of your kidneys.

If you are found to be healthy, and your antibodies and blood type are well-matched to the person getting your kidney, you may be approved to donate your kidney. Most kidney transplant surgeries are done laparoscopically.

A laparoscopic surgery is a new surgery method that uses very small cuts on the body and a thin lighted tube to look inside the body. This operation takes hours, and a kidney donor usually spends days in the hospital recovering. The recovery period after laparoscopic surgery is much shorter than after a traditional open surgery.

There are also fewer complications with laparoscopic surgery. Before the use of laparoscopic surgery, the kidney was removed from a larger, open cut, causing a longer recovery period for the patient, compared to the laparoscopic method. Donate Now. Give Monthly Give In Honor. Kidney donation. Learn how to ask for a kidney donation Learn how to ask for a kidney donation from family, friends or strangers and get tips on sharing your story. Learn how.