People from Britain are reportedly turning to Facebook to sell their kidneys in exchange for money, says a journalist who discovered a dedicated page for organ trade.
Facebook has a dedicated page, "I Want To Sell My Kidney," for selling and buying kidneys online. The page has almost 1,000 likes and people from different parts of the world are posting offers to sell their kidneys. This act is illegal under the British law and punishable by up to three years in jail.
According to a Sunday Post report, which first discovered and reported the organ trade on Facebook, desperate Brits are willing to go under the knife to offer their kidneys in exchange for money. One of the newspaper's reporters posed as the brother of a woman who desperately needed a kidney transplant and offered to "pay well" for the trade.
The Facebook post, which read, "We desperately need a kidney for my sister who has two young children and is seriously ill. We will pay well but must be UK based," was acknowledged by some serious donors willing to trade their internal organ for money. According to the report, the post received 11 offers from people around the world willing to accept the offer.
Among the numerous offers, one came from a man based in Northampton and he was willing to accept £20,000 (about $33,000) for his kidney to help finance a trip for him and his wife to return to their home in Hungary. Other offers came from three people from India, a man from Mexico and a woman from Tanzania.
Though Facebook does not promote any pages used for illegal activities such as organ trading through its site, with the massive network and numerous pages it is hard to examine and ban each and every page created on the site.
As for the Sunday Post's findings, a special advisor for the World Health Organization, Dr Luc Noel said, "Your Facebook experience is revealing. It demonstrates the vulnerability of some people and the power of easy money. This is one of the reasons to prohibit payment. Meeting patients' needs also demands that there should not be any divide created by financial incentives."
