Scan barcode
A review by sevenlefts
The Red Market: On the Trail of the World's Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers, and Child Traffickers by Scott Carney
4.0
Carney makes the point in this book that all of us are or know someone who is involved in the global red market -- giving or receiving blood and organs, benefiting from human drug trials, seeing doctors who have trained with human corpses and skeletons, adopting children. In this short book (any chapter of which could have been expanded into it's own book, I think), he looks at the forces that drive these markets and asks the reader to face the sometimes harrowing stories behind them.
The opening chapter takes place in India, where, as a leader of a student group, Carney has to make a series of uncomfortable decisions after a horrific incident. The surrounding events introduce him to the various ways that human body and body parts -- and the people they belong to -- are marketed, stolen, exported, and otherwise exploited. Many of the markets described in the book are active in India, because of the high levels of poverty and lax regulation, but Carney investigates red markets all over the world, including blood and organ procurement, human egg donation and implantation, child "adoption," skeletons for anatomical study, international surrogacy, drug testing, and others.
Carney makes several excellent points -- notably, that neither a solely market-driven system nor a wholly altruistic system works for any of these markets (with the exception of hair extensions shorn from Indiana religious pilgrims!). He makes a strong case for complete transparency in all red markets, with the donor and receiver clearly identifiable. He also forces us to face the fact that the benefits of red markets always float upward economically, never downward. Carney describes several cases of children being kidnapped in India and basically sold into adoption in the west. Can you imagine the uproar if a child from the U.S. were sold into adoption in India?
A small book that gives you much to think about.
The opening chapter takes place in India, where, as a leader of a student group, Carney has to make a series of uncomfortable decisions after a horrific incident. The surrounding events introduce him to the various ways that human body and body parts -- and the people they belong to -- are marketed, stolen, exported, and otherwise exploited. Many of the markets described in the book are active in India, because of the high levels of poverty and lax regulation, but Carney investigates red markets all over the world, including blood and organ procurement, human egg donation and implantation, child "adoption," skeletons for anatomical study, international surrogacy, drug testing, and others.
Carney makes several excellent points -- notably, that neither a solely market-driven system nor a wholly altruistic system works for any of these markets (with the exception of hair extensions shorn from Indiana religious pilgrims!). He makes a strong case for complete transparency in all red markets, with the donor and receiver clearly identifiable. He also forces us to face the fact that the benefits of red markets always float upward economically, never downward. Carney describes several cases of children being kidnapped in India and basically sold into adoption in the west. Can you imagine the uproar if a child from the U.S. were sold into adoption in India?
A small book that gives you much to think about.