Poor prey for people parts

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.


Everyone’s heard the urban legend about a person who wakes up in a drugged haze to discover that her kidney has been surgically removed. To people in some parts of the world, that spooky rumor is apparently all too true.

Recent Must Reads

12/12 – Grizzlies headed for grisly end

12/9 – Biodiversity buys the farm

12/8 – Bigger and badder corporations

12/7 – Talking ourselves out of conservation

In an interview published in FREEZERBOX, a Canadian physician reports that such incidents take place routinely in many poor countries where organ trafficking is big business. Some organ thieves, he says, will regularly attack — and even kill — homeless people and children to make off with the valuable organs.

Demand for human body parts, particularly from wealthy countries, keeps the global black market for gizzards booming. A human heart, the physician says, can fetch $5,000 and each gram of bone is worth many times its weight in cocaine.

Owned by no one—except you.

We just keep seeing it happen: Newsrooms owned by billionaires and corporations are spinning their own narratives, overwriting the truth, following only stories that keep them in the pocket of those with even more power.

Not here. We’re not owned by anyone. We’re not part of any cult that demands our allegiance to a bottom line. We’ve spoken up and spoken out while other newsrooms changed their stories—or cut them altogether—to keep the C suite happy.

Our mission is to find the truth and amplify it. That’s why we’re independent, nonprofit, and, crucially, funded by readers. The investigations on our website will always be free to read, watch, and listen to, but our newsroom is powered by readers who pitch in what they can so we can keep asking the hard questions.

Can you chip in today?

Owned by no one—except you.

We just keep seeing it happen: Newsrooms owned by billionaires and corporations are spinning their own narratives, overwriting the truth, following only stories that keep them in the pocket of those with even more power.

Not here. We’re not owned by anyone. We’re not part of any cult that demands our allegiance to a bottom line. We’ve spoken up and spoken out while other newsrooms changed their stories—or cut them altogether—to keep the C suite happy.

Our mission is to find the truth and amplify it. That’s why we’re independent, nonprofit, and, crucially, funded by readers. The investigations on our website will always be free to read, watch, and listen to, but our newsroom is powered by readers who pitch in what they can so we can keep asking the hard questions.

Can you chip in today?

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

INDEPENDENT. BECAUSE OF YOU.

Mother Jones has no billionaires calling the shots—just readers like you making fearless reporting possible

Donate