Well, fellow conspiracy realists, think you as always so much for tuning in. We are returning to you with a classic episode that is not for the faint of heart. We do have, I think, an ethical responsibility to mention that this contains graphic descriptions of disturbing and very real conspiracies. We called it the Red Market. It's about the organ trade, not the organ trail. We did this in twenty nineteen.
You know, I commented off Mike, this is one of my favorites, which I don't know what that says about me. I just I've always been fascinated by the black market trading of human organs.
There's a Korean film from the early.
Two thousands called Sympathy for Mister Vengeance that really got my mind whirling.
As far as like this type of crime.
I think I probably mentioned that on the episode as well, but it's really does. It is a whole world that you might not be aware of, blissfully, and we're about to take you down that particular bloody rabbit hole.
Yeah. This is also one of my favorite videos we ever made, guys, when we went on a little road trip to the Guide Stones and we made a video in the car Ben talking about the red Market, and it was awesome. You did a drive and make a video which was probably.
We never explained it.
We do explain it, but we also just it was a little dangerous. You were just driving and being awesome on camera and I don't know how you did both at the same time, but you pulled it off. But great video. Check it out on the YouTube channel. Did you guys hear about this guy in Kentucky from It's a story that is just coming out now, but it happened in twenty twenty.
Most got his organs almost wasted. Yeah, he almost that. He was an organ donor, yes, and it's legal for people to take your organs as an organ donor if you are dead.
Yes, And he was declared brain dead after he over dosed. But then as he was being wheeled in to have his organs taken out, he was attempting to move his eyes around and let people know he was awake. His family noticed. Doctors tell him, no, no, that's just normal. That's what happens. He gets on the O R table he's being prepped, and then he starts flailing around on the table and the surgeons are like, guys, we can't do this, yeah, I mean.
The still moving Yeah. Usually this is a part of why this classic episode resonates with us so much tonight, folks, as you listen with us and explore this with us, it is possible that the government of China is executing prisoners and political or religious dissidents and then selling their organs.
And the big scary takeaway in this episode the remember the thing we talked about is where else could it be happening?
And how?
Well, let's jump right into the episode, guys.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't.
Want you to know.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
They call me Ben and you are you? And that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Today's podcast comes oddly enough, from a pretty tasteless joke that we made a while back, and I don't remember if it made it to the air.
It did.
Yeah, we were joking about the Oregon Trail because someone suggested we covered the topic of illegal organ trafficking, which is a great suggestion.
Yeah, And then we all died of dysentery.
And then we all die of dysentery in the middle.
Of a spoiler alert.
Yeah, because we were dumb enough to start the game as farmers. Oh they never do that, way harder. But yeah, we were kicking around, just terrible titles, and one of those was, of course.
The organ trail. The organ Well, if you say it like that, yeah, it can go either way.
Well, title aside, this is I don't apologize for that title pn. I didn't. I just said title aside. Okay, So we think this is a complex, global and continual phenomenon and it is worth exploring in depth because, aside from some maybe scare pieces that pop up at a slow day in the news cycle, this is not really examined and the causes of it aren't examined as well. There is a lot of stuff they don't want you to know about organ transplants, the organ trade in general,
what has been called the red market. So at first I wanted to ask you, guys, Matt Noll, those are our real names. Sorry for everyone. Should we apologize for that one?
I don't know what you're talking about.
That's a good point, So have you guys ever known or been acquainted with someone who received an organ transplant.
I could not come up with a good example when I was going back through my life.
If you count bone marrow, which I think you should, Yeah, then yes, I know. It's an intense process as far as like getting on a list, getting matched with the right candidate, and then actually getting the procedure done and having everything booked because it is a very timely process.
You know, once everything goes through, and there's a lot of uncertainty, and you even hear stories about people trying to get higher up on the list by you know, grease and some palms here and there, you know, right, So I mean there's a lot at stake obviously, and I won't say who this person was just to you know, maintain their their privacy, but yeah, it was it was very nerve nerve wracking, just wondering when it was going to happen, when it was going to go through, and
when it did go through, if everything was going to work out correctly.
Mm hmmm, yeah, because even with everything going as well as possible, there's still, ah, there's still a significant risk.
Sure, and it's not like if that one doesn't work out. They're just going to give you another one. I mean, that's the one that you get, and then if it doesn't work out, if you make it, you have to start the whole process over it.
So that is a terrifying prospect. Let's let's talk about organs first, because, as you know, this podcast is part of how stuff works. So we want to start at the most basic thing. Organs. There are what are the few things that everybody has in common? Everyone who is involved with this show, we all have organs.
Yes, everyone listening to the show hopefully has organs.
Maybe there's some sort of machine consciousness listening there, and that gets into a conversation about what would constitute an organ.
Yeah, maybe Dick Cheney is listening with his robotic heart that just constantly circulates blood instead of pumping.
That's a pacemaker. That's not, isn't it. I thought it was.
It's not. He doesn't have a pacemaker anymore. Now it's just a constant flow of blood. There's no he has no heartbeat.
Oh, I thought you just meant he was like a heartless individual. I thought you were, Well.
Yeah, no, no, I'm not rioffing this is true, But but I'm also implying certain certain ways.
There are levels to this statement. Well, I want one of those.
Cheney charming person That's true.
You usually say that as.
Soon as I'm smiling. I'm doing it just just just for the for folks listening, I am doing a big chess or cat grin here.
I know.
Sometimes I say things like I mean them, and then I'm smiling or making a face that these guys and you guys don't see that. So you may think I have quite an odd variety of opinions out there in podcast Lamba. Just to set the record straight, you know, Dick Cheney's the Prince going.
Noe Brown is a huge Dick Cheney fan. So, by the strictest definition and in biology, biologically speaking, outside of the world of music, an organ is just a group of tissues in a living organism that have been adapted to perform a specific function. Sounds simple, don't Yeah, it sounds pretty simple. You have a heart, and your heart has like one main job, right.
Sure, same with your liver, your kidneys, your eyes, all of the parts. I think there are seventy eight official organs.
Well by that by it depends again on the definition and be around seventy eight. People will argue back and forth what does or does not constitute a organ entire.
What I find meat though, is that these organs are divided into two very distinct categories. All the ones we mentioned are considered vital organs, which are organs that are absolutely essential for maintaining your health and you know, your life. Ultimately. These are the kinds of things like your heart, your brain, your kidneys, your liver, things that perform processes that you need done in order to live in the environment that we.
Yeah, I think the besides the eyes, I mentioned the eyes, that's true, but I don't know.
Would you consider eye as part of this second category vestigial organs, which is no way yeah either, well.
I I don't know. I don't know. I think you would probably get arguments for that.
I suppose you could say, maybe we could live in a society or we have evolved beyond the need of our eyes, but you'd certainly put you at a disadvantage.
Sure, and right now society has evolved to make something like blindness or deafness not a death sentence. But people were simply animals in the.
Wild gather type scenario, like you d be sunk.
It'd be it would be more difficult, for sure. And that's that's one of the that's one of the great benefits of the the whole human experiment. Right. But well, let's talk about these other organs vestigial right, vestigial organs. This would be something that is a rudimentary structure in us that corresponds to a functional structure in another animal. Right, sometimes described as the lower animals, which I think is hugely condescending and unfair. But we have all kinds.
Of examples of this, right, What about things like tonsils or like an appendix.
Yeah, wisdom teeth or maybe a tail. Yes, people are born sometimes with the tail.
Perhaps male nipples.
Oh man, whoa, I'm so tired of like it used to really bother me. It's like, why are these here? Is it no purpose?
You guys aren't using them right, I mean not like right now. No, I'm just saying you're not using them correctly.
Oh, I see, we're a family show, did you guys see?
I just yeah, really fast? Okay? Did you see the article about the Atlanta Native couple Josh and Chuck posted this quick thing? A woman who left her job to find a male partner, oh to to breastfeeds feed like adults, And this is apparently a huge thing.
Is it like a like a fetishy thing?
I think it is?
OK?
Yeah, but he doesn't have some sort of strange disorder that makes him some sort of breast milk vampire.
Does she like have to burp him and stuff?
I don't know, but but I did some looking into this story, and it appears that there's a whole counterculture of people who do this, who believe that there are massive health benefits for both.
Parties, people who say that their health benefits.
Yeah, and perhaps that is an episode for another day.
And perhaps perhaps you are right, And hey, it's tough to be happy, So I wish them the best of luck. It sounds like it's consensual returning to organs. So we've got these things. We need many of them. There's some that we don't particularly need need to live, right.
You can go without acadney, you know both.
You could go without wisdom teeth, right, sure, So what do you do when the important ones fail? The ones that are not like add on packages to the car that is your body, but the stuff that's like the engine and the transmission, well, for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. When people's organs failed, they died. Yep, that was it, sometimes quickly, sometimes in prolonged, excruciatingly painful ways.
The human body. To bring it to our current capitalists societ, the human body was a product with planned obsolescence, no warranties, and no returns, no exchanges either.
And that's not to say that over the years throughout history medical science hasn't been attempting to replace these things in dying humans when their heart is giving out or their liver is dying or something like that. We've attempted humans many times to try and replace these things.
Yeah, not you, Nolan, me, but fellow members of our species have been experimenting with organ transplants since at least the seventeenth century, in animals and in humans. And along the way there were many, many, many gruesome, horrific and tragic failures.
A lot of them we don't even know about because they were never written down.
Right, But we do have early examples.
Yeah, sixteen sixty eight, a bone graft was attempted using a dog's skull and actually successfully attached this graft to a human's head.
Yeah yeah, And we see the animal transplants, the practice of putting animal components into a human body, where we're not unheard of.
Well, I mean at the time, it probably seemed like a logical jump to make you know, why not, let's just give it a shot.
And that could have also been at the uh what if stage?
Yeah, sure, especially if you're getting desperate trying to save somebody, I mean, and if someone is on their last legs, you'd try anything, and in that desperation. In nineteen oh five, there were some doctors who took slices of a rabbit kidney. They put it into a child and it did seem to improve kidney function, at least for a little while. Unfortunately, the child did die shortly after that from from pulmonary congestion.
Right. And then in the same year nineteen o five, doctors managed to transplant a cornea into the damaged eye of a laborer, restoring his sight.
That's that, to me is crazy to think about in nineteen oh five, like any kind of eye surgery back then.
That's like buy an a lottery ticket every day for a week and winning.
Yeah.
Then in nineteen oh six we have a French surgeon Matteo Jubilet who attempted to save two patients' lives they were suffering from renal failure by transplanting goat kidney into one of the patients and a pig kidney into the other, and they died shortly thereafter work. And I think what the big takeaway is from a lot of these early examples is that these organs are incredibly specific. They and this just goes into the whole idea of being on a transplant list or like you have to get just
the right one. It has to match your type of as to there are a lot of factors involved that you know will make this work, otherwise your body will literally reject.
This organ right in this There were other attempts through the thirties and on and on up and with each of these, with each of these failures, there were hard lessons learned, and it looked like it maybe it might be something that was just going to be beyond the bounds of reliable medical technology and science, at least that is until the first successful organ transplant in December of nineteen fifty four.
Yeah, it was this guy named Ronald Herrick. He was the first one. He had a successful transplant procedure. Pretty awesome. It was. It's a cool story too, actually, and there's a house Stuff Works article on organ donation where you can find this story. He had a twin brother named Richard, and one of his you know, his kidneys were failing, and his brother basically decided, well, what if I give
one of my kidneys? And the doctor saw this was really interesting because it hadn't been successful in the past, but because their genetics were so close, almost identical, they thought perhaps it would work. So the doctors didn't have much faith that this would actually be carried out. Even though you know, they have faith in themselves and being able to make the procedure happen, they don't think it will the organ itself will take. The great thing is
that it did work. Both of them survives and they went on to live happily ever after, right or did they?
Yeah?
I mean that part. We're kidding on that part. No one does that. But they did. Okay, Yeah, they did great, they both recovered at least.
What a Debbie Downer you are, sir?
Uh, yeah, I guess I'm more what's a word for downer that starts with a bee? So we could do it like Benji bad attitude.
No, that's terrible. Well, that's why you're right.
You're absolutely right, and there's no reason to be down, is there? Because this worked very well and after this watershed moment, more and more successful transplants took place. So today, at least in the US and really globally, if you are someone with enough money and enough luck and enough opportunity, you really can get a second chance at life with
a new organ. We cannot emphasize how amazing this is and how technology still since I'm going to try to be positive for the rest of the podcast, Nation, I appreciate it to you. We still know that this medical technology continues to evolve at a breakneck pace, you know,
doing amazing things. If a child, for a child born today the day you're hearing this, by the time they are eighteen, it is quite possible that they will be able to buy grown organs grown in a lab, not taken from another person, or to take possibly organs from genetically modified animals or entirely entirely synthetic ye things. However, we're not there yet at this point, yours, the best and only way that you can get another organ is
by getting it from another person. Many people volunteer to donate their own organs, like the twin we mentioned earlier, either a kidney or you know, you can live with one kidney, like you said, Noel.
You can chop a liver almost in half and it will regenerate.
Yeah, and it'll regenerate almost as full size. Or if you are a person with the driver's license in the US, you are incentivized to be an organ donor could you get a little discount yep. And what they do is they just say, well, if the worst thing happens, the worst thing for you at least, then something great might happen for some other people.
Which is a pretty terrifying thought. But at the same time, you know, if you're dead, depending on your religious and spiritual beliefs, then hey, who cares, somebody else can use it.
You can't take them with you.
You know, And arguably you could say this is a form of extending someone's life if you are if a piece of you lives on in someone else.
Absolutely, The pharaohs of Egypt would probably disagree though, I mean, they had all of their organs pulled out and put into jars and preserved. Yeah, in their tombs, you know, so that they could have them in the actual life.
And that was part of the that was part of the belief system at the time, you know. And there there's still some there's still some religions and belief systems that do not allow for organ donation, like the aroma don't practice it because they believe you need your physical body and all its components for at least the first year.
Yeah, because you have to retrace your steps.
Right, and now we know, now we know that this this stuff does work. It gives the average person a chance to be a hero and should be quite candid, this is a situation where people need heroes. Between nineteen ninety eight and two thousand and eight, there were more than ninety one thousand living donations. It's donations from somebody who gave theory will survive after. In two thousand and six, nearly forty six percent of organ donors we're living donors.
So that accounts for about twenty one point six percent of all organs donated. So, like Matt you said, you can donate part your liver and live and donate part of a lung, part of your pancreas. You can donate a whole kidney, yeah, or part of your intestines.
You do have to be in pretty darn good health to make a donation like this. Oh. I mean, it is true that there are only a few prohibitive factors that could stop you certain diseases, being HIV positive or something like that. But you know, still, I don't think anyone would want my liver, probably, Ben.
Do we have a stat about how often direct family members are the ones that are doing the donation, because that would just seem to me that would sure save a lot of this process lists and the waiting lists search for compatibility.
Well, we don't have that exactly, but we do know according to the American Transplant Foundation that of about five thousand living donations that occur that they watched, only one in four of the donors was not biologically related to the recipient, at least from their perspective.
Interesting.
It's not legal to buy or sell organs here in the US for transplant, but it is legal to buy and sell them for research purposes. So as long as you say, well, sorry, uncle Sam, this is not for me. I am doing a science project, and I We've got
a couple more stats if you want. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, more than two thousand new names are added to the national waiting list for organ transplants and to get that every month and every day, the day you are listening to this podcast, ladies and gentlemen, in the US alone, about eighteen people die while waiting for an organ transplant. So these people, these voluntary donors, living or dead, are doing terrific, wonderful and much needed.
Work and we need more.
But here's the thing, not all of these donors are volunteers.
As it turns out, quite a few of them are victims. And we'll get more into that after we take a quick break.
So, as you can tell from the statistics we covered earlier everything that we've talked about thus far, the need for organs far outweighs the supply for organs.
And what happens then there is a basically a golf that needs to be filled. And as we know, when there's money to be made, people are going to come along and fill that golf.
Yeah, when's when supply and demand don't meet, there's going to be profit. And that's what we see.
And the question becomes a essential you know what I mean? This is not well, I steal a Selica or an Lantra from someone because I want a Selica or an Lantra, or God forbid a Honda Odyssey, which is not worth it. This is a question of survival. If you are sitting next to someone listening to this, and you are close to that person, look at each other. What would you do to keep them alive? Would you donate your kidney? If given the opportunity, would you find them a heart?
The average heart will beat approximately two point five billion times in the course of an average person's life. So now you need to start thinking about the age of this heart you would procure, because honestly, you'll get more mileage the younger. That transplant source is Wow, Ben Well, it's true. Unfortunately, it's true, and let's be honest. This is just my personal opinion here. Some of the results of this come about because the American medical system is
a joke without a punchline. People are dying due to a phenomenally byzantine system of jacked up prices for operations and medicines that would be affordable in many other countries. This is again, this is just my opinion, but there are numerous facts that point to the point to a very poor performance on the part of the US medical system in comparison to the rest of the developed world.
I mean, if we are considering the entire population, if we're only considering the people who can pay the price tag, then the US medical system is the best in the world.
And look at the examples. You see if people that you know are in the hospital for three or four days and then their insurance gets cut off or like you know, it maxes out, and they're left with like a ten thousand dollars bill for being the hospital for a few days just so they can.
Breathe for a fifty thousand dollars bill of course, yeah.
Exactly right, and then be in debt for the rest of their lives or bankrupt. Right. So this I mean, and that maybe is a subject. I know, it's a touchy one for a lot of people. So that will perhaps be a subject of a future show. I don't know what you guys think. And of course we can anticipate the arguments. People say, well, medical care is not free. That is true, and that's something we can explore in
a future episode. Right now, in the case of kidneys, which are by far one of the most common organs transplant donated harvested traffic, only seventeen percent of the annual demand is being met, and due to again skyrocketing medical cost the vast majority of US citizens have virtually no way of affording a living donor. So make no mistake, legal organ transplants, like many other operations, are are overwhelmingly out of the reach of a lot of people.
Not to mention, maybe you're just so far down the list. Yes, it's just the time of this is not on your side. People will do desperate things in times of this kind of stress.
Yeah, that's a really good point, because even if we're talking about people who have enough capital or income to to have the best medical care in the world right and maybe survive as long as they can on the list, then there's some things you know, you just can't legally buy. So imagine, imagine, Matt, that you are a multi millionaire, but nope, but you can't. You can't afford this legal avenue, and that leaves you with two options.
Yeah, I guess I would die or I would find a way to get one.
Guess which one people tend to choose.
I'm guessing they just take kidneys.
According to the UN, there are three broad categories of organ trafficking. Number one are cases involving traffickers that force or actually deceive victims into giving up an organ. Example might be a person's kidnapped, their organ is harvested.
Or or this is the one that everyone knows from the movies, right, you meet a charming stranger, a great cool guy or girl or group of people, and you party a little harder than you intended and the next thing you know.
Yeah, you wake up in a tub of ice in the hotel and there's some staples on your side.
That's chilling. I talked to you guys about this before the show the movie Sympathy for Mister Vengeance. I think this is a it's a really really dark movie. It's beautifully made, though not but it's for kids. But it involves this very thing, and it points to some of the conditions that might lead someone to enter into an
even an agreement with these type of folks. Where one of the main characters has a sister who needs I believe it's a kidney, and she's on this waiting list but it's not working out and it's taking too long and she's not doing well. So the main character finds these gangsters and agrees with them, like, Okay, I'm gonna you're gonna take out my kidney and we're going to do the operation. Instead, they knock him out, take his kidney and his money, and disappear.
Right, And this is common enough to be a trope in a lot of fiction as far as how often it actually happens that way in real life, it's it's tough to find proof. But that's not the only case. You said, there are three categories.
Right, So the second category involves cases where victims formally or informally agree to sell an organ and then are cheated out of money. So the thing for the film is almost a combination of the two. Are then cheated out of the money or paid less than promised and threatened, you know totally.
You'll take what we give you exactly. You're lucky to leave with your life.
Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. These are opportunistic, manipulative folks that are that are doing these things. They are finding people in their time of need, their time of most desperation. Yeah, and you know, turning the screws on the criminals.
Yeah. Well, and sometimes it even does happen voluntarily where someone will fly to Turkey or something to give their their kidney four or five thousand dollars, you know, four ten thousand dollars US. Meanwhile, the person who is taking the kidney is going to make ten times that, twenty times that.
Yeah, And as as problematic as Ben said as are medical system is at least you do have some assurances and you know everything's documented and you know nothing like that.
Whatever happen, and hopefully your chances of survival are much higher because it's cleaner and they're they're better standards for care. But there's there's another thing we have to say here. I don't want to jump I have too far other than to say there is a vast criminal element to this. And this is something that happens. Whenever something is illegal the people are going to do. There will be, as you said, no opportunistic people involved. Imagine having a gambling debt.
You're in over your head, you have no hope of paying this off within the time allotted to you. And then Noel, let's say I have a gambling debt to you. Let's say what's a massive amount of money to owe for gambling.
One million dollars.
Okay, So I had a wild night in Macau, and now I owe you, the shadowy leader of the underworld, one million dollars. And you told me I have forty eight hours, it's our forty seven, and I'm dragged you into whatever palatial you have sure, And and then you make it very clear that you're you're fine with killing me, but you give me a chance. You tell me I can give up, you know, my kidney or part of my lung or my liver. And of course people are going to say yes to something like that. It's horrific,
but they will. And then there's the third case, which to me is one of the saddest.
I have to say. Guys, in this example, it would be it would make a lot more sense if it was maybe one hundred thousand dollars, because they would make that if you owed a million dollars.
Yeah, they would just kill me and take and harvest.
Because they could. They could pretty much make that from your entire body.
I would go to the chop shop. Yikes, don't do it, No, don't do it. Tell me, I've never started gambling. I've never gambled, and I don't intend to start now because I am frightened by this scenario.
No, it's true. I mean even you know, I've played some slots here and there, but same don't think I could ever.
Go bewn that. I thought you were about to say. No, it's true. I guess I would have.
To do that. Well, you know, when faced with that situation and I have to take care of my investment.
Oh oh yeah, Ice Cold, I respect you though. Number three, This is perhaps one of the saddest.
Yes. The third example is when a vulnerable person receives treatment for some ailment, perhaps it's real, perhaps it's not, only to find when they come out of surgery or whatever procedure they went through, they find that one or more of their organs have been removed during the operation, and it ranges from what organs are taken in this procedure. And this is one of the more terrifying. I mean,
these are all terrifying, but this one to me. Trusting someone going into a surgery or something like that only to find that something completely different has happened. Yikes.
And we're talking about completely enfranchised people that have no recourse, migrant workers, homeless people, the impoverished, the illiterate. They are just easy targets for these folks who want to prey on the fact that they have no one to protect them.
And they can be any age, they can be any you know, cree, race, ethnicity, whatever sort of label you want to attach to an example of the human species.
As long as they got the goods and by that I mean kidneys, livers, any of these organs that are you know, ultimately pretty easy to remove in a bench, which is horrifying in and of itself, especially when you consider that you know, these are not done in sanitary conditions, These are not done.
In clean rooms, you know, well, yeah, And the fact that they could be removed and then you can still live depending on how you were treated after and what type of process they took to actually remove it and then fix you up, which is that to me is awful. Can you imagine living after that just happening to you, the PTSD that you would experience in your life.
I personally would be thrilled to be alive, sure, because I think at the time and money you save if you're working with volume on sutures, on cleaning.
Up are you saying I mean, I'm trying to just figure out why it's in their best interest to leave these people alive in the first place.
I think that a lot of it is because it is a transaction, you know, So if it's a transaction, then it's ultimately a business. And if the business model is you know, if you establish consistency, people will only come back to you or only go pay you if
they know they're going to live. Yeah. So if we're around the street turns out that you just kill people and take their organs, which we do have cases of that, then people aren't going to go to you with their debts or their blood money of one sort or another. And okay, so we said earlier that kidneys make up seventy five percent of this illegal organ trade. But do you know why. It's not just because you can take one and sell, although I think that's a huge part
of it. It's also because of the rising rates of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart problems and such across the globe.
Yeah, so you need those the filtration system that are the kidneys which are failing across the board.
And for everyone who might think this is a strange thing for us to cover, we would argue that this is an example of not one, but multiple international conspiracies, not theories. And again, a conspiracy just means people working together in secret toward a common goal. Organized crime necessitates conspiracies.
This involves recruiters, people who transport or the patient, underground, medical staff, middleman contractors, buyers, and banks that store the organs because remember, organs don't keep and a lot of people throughout the history of organ transplants have died because an organ was pulled from a cadaver that have been
dead for hours. You know, So this stuff is on ice and on the good side, on the legal side, there's this amazing logistics chain of of how people move an organ and keep it stored on ice across the country or across the ocean to save someone's life. And this can be a good thing.
It can be a good thing for the law side. The problem is, because these networks are so large, when they get exposed, it will a lot of times be one arm or one one section of a network, and you never really get to see the larger picture because you know, when you're operating underground like this, you just pick up shop and get out of there. If there isn't a good paper trail.
Right, Yeah, So let's talk about some facts about organ trafficking. So I'll start with one. Organ trafficking accounts for five to ten percent of all kidney transplants worldwide.
Is mind blowing to me.
That's like saying illegal car sales account for ten percent of all cars purchased, you know in the US.
Or some you just wouldn't ever associate that, I don't know. Who is interesting?
And according to the WHO, the World Health Organization, the illegal trade and kidneys has risen to a level that an estimated ten thousand black market operations involving purchased human
organs now take place every year. And according to a couple of organizations organ Failure Solutions, Organs Watch, and EESOT, the typical organ donor is a male about twenty eight point nine, let's say twenty nine years old, with an annual income of four hundred and eighty dollars, while the typical recipient is a male of about forty eight point one years old with an annual income of fifty three thousand dollars. So the discrepancy there between the donor and the recipient is pretty telling.
And organs aren't just used for transplants. There's a demand for illicit experimentation from unethical scientists. Think of these as the modern version of resurrection men.
Recerave robbers.
Threat resurrection men were grave robbers, especially during a time when it was legal to experiment on cadavers for med schools and stuff, but it was illegal to procure the bodies. So that's a chilling but not entirely inaccurate comparison. And then of course there are there are other body parts, such as bones or genitalia, that are used for magical.
Rituals, and the profit margins here can be outrageous. In July of two thousand and nine, Levy Itzac Rosenbaum was arrested in Brooklyn for conspiring to arrange the sale of an Israeli citizen's kidney to an undercover FBI agent for one hundred and sixty thousand dollars. He said he'd been selling kidneys for ten years underground. He paid ten thousand for a kidney and sold it for one hundred and sixty thousand.
And there are an unsettling number of examples of at least parts of networks that have been exposed to. Al Jazeera really recently put out a story I think in February about a small syndicate in Indonesia in this place called Java, West Java, where this really small village that had a population of thirty people, a large number of them sold their kidneys for around five thousand dollars each and it was being run out of a state hospital.
Really crazy stuff like that. Just some bad people who are working with a couple other bad people inside a state run organization. A story from The Guardian in two thousand and nine discussed how some pathologists in Israel were harvesting organs from Palestinians and several others. That was in the nineteen nineties. It has ended officially at least, which
is nice. And if you search for this kind of this stuff, just put organ Harvesting Network into Google and then click on the news column and just go back, and it's prevalent. There's a lot of it.
And in neither of the cases that Matt just mentioned, neither in Indonesia nor in Israel, were these state sanctioned things. These were under ground cabals operating and then they were eventually exposed.
Yeah, and that's almost always how it is.
Except in the People's Republic of China and the People's Republic of China. You can see numerous accusations that say the government itself is harvesting organs from executed prisoners, or, as claimed in a PBS documentary from twenty fifteen, that the government is actually collecting organs from live prisoners or practitioners of a spiritual group, of a spiritual belief system
called Follongong. The idea here is that China is arbitrarily imprisoning this minority religious group and then torturing them, killing them, selling their organs, getting rich off what's called transplant tourism.
Yep.
And again you can find it in the US, you can find it in Brazil, in South Africa. It's this practice is occurring all over the globe.
So you guys, why is this still going on? Why is this still so prevalent?
I would say there's several reasons. One of the big ones would be demand. And if we're saying demand, what we need to look at will be the precipitous rise of health conditions in the you know what, in the world entire because there's this big stereotype of terribly unhealthy Americans, right,
that stereotype has some truth in it. One in nine or twenty six million Americans have kidney disease and most probably don't know it, but obesity and diabetes and related things are on the rise in the developing world as well, so there are more people with worse parts. And I think as long as as that situation continues, until we can grow stuff in a vat yep, until we can
all live a more healthy lifestyle. And I am not volunteering, by the way, because I'm setting my ways and they are terrible until we can iron man or chainey up some some suitable technological or mechanical replacement.
Good. The problem, the problem with this stuff, ben is that it's still going to favor those that are wealthy because it will cost money. It's a service either, you know, it's not easy to remove an organ and put it back in.
Well. Sure, and as we start to develop, you know, more high tech ways of doing this, whether it's lab grown or what have you, it's going to be like these hypothetical situations with life extension technology. Who is that going to be for, right, It's going to be for the upper class, which is the class that is basically in control.
M HM.
That's a harrowing point because on the surface, the legal
organ trade. At least if you look at the rules or the guidelines for the list, they say that this a person's placement on the list is evaluated by factors that are entirely biologically related, severity of illness, time spent waiting, blood type, match potential, and at least according to American Transplant Foundation, income, race, and social status are never taken into account in the allocation process, which sounds like a beautiful thing.
Until you take into account means to move yourself up on that list that aren't necessarily proven, right, but you know, colluding with someone who controls the list.
Or staying or you know, the means to participate in this illegal market which is making hundreds of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars minimum, probably more in an estimated billion. And also also it's tough to find these sorts of rings and wipe them out entirely. You know, people's survival instinct is good. The money it's just so profitable, right,
And these are people often operating across international boundaries. So at this point, at that at this point, regardless of the various solutions to the various causes for this sort of situation, it just that it doesn't seem to be going away.
This is really tough because in a lot of the black markets that we've looked at in the past, it seems as though the legalization of whatever product that is being sold can kind of solve that black market because it then becomes a free market thing. Okay, right, with this situation, you can't really legalize just the voluntary donation and receiving of organs from other humans, at least I can't foresee away.
Well, it just a lot is left up to chance. When you go the legal route, and it almost seems like the illegal route, you might be more likely to at least have the perception that you're going to get what you need, you know about having to jump through as many hoops or wait as long, and you have less uncertainty.
And you could even hypothetically hire an entire network, so you could get the level of care that you would expect from a you know, from a top notch hospital. If you just buy a doctor and her his services for this one thing, if you just contracted out, it
would cost an enormous amount of money. But if a new kidney gives you another nine years of life, a lot of people would see that as a as a fair trade, you know, and I'm sure that a lot of the people who are participating in this illegal organ trafficking are also doing it out of desperation and are not monstrous people, you know, they are Possibly maybe it's more like a matchmaking thing where they meet someone who wants money and they have the money and they say, okay, here,
let's make a deal. Maybe it is. It may well be consensual many times, but also many times it is not.
Yeah, because we also we've seen that this matches up with the act of human trafficking as well, right, I mean, where people will be treated like cattle and taken to another place where this will happen to them. It's been reported on a lot by the un of how closely linked human trafficking and organ trafficking is, so you know, it's weird how far ranging this process or how much it encompasses. It's also one of these kind of devil's bargain scenarios where you don't really.
Know the cost, the actual cost.
Of what you're buying.
You know, you're paying money and maybe you can afford it, and maybe you are a wealthy person that has decided to go this route because of the hoops required to get on a legal list to get you know, what
you need when you need it. So maybe you decided to go this route because you feel like you can make it happen quicker for yourself or a loved one, But you don't know who was manipulated, who was taken advantage of to get that for you, So you are becoming part of this problem by you know, feeding it.
M Yeah, absolutely agree this. Okay, let's end on an up note if we can. I know this has been a you know, I took that Debbie down or advice to heart, so I'm trying to see some silver linings.
There is a huge financial incentive now for medical technologists and for inventors to create and geneticist as well to create some sort of viable alternative, because even if the illegal organ trafficking networks expand and expand even more so in size, we're at a point where taking things from one human and putting them in another is probably not enough. So what we're going to need to do as a species is to create a viable alternative, and people are
working around the clock to do so. So this situation may become eventually a thing of the past. You know, eventually, hopefully your children and your grandchildren will hear about this age and medicine and treat it with the same incredulity that we used to treat stories of a world before germ theory.
They used to take organs out of one person and put it in another person.
And they used to use hands to type what why don't you just think it into your Google?
I think it is weird to think how long this conversation will last digitally. If the Internet stays around for long enough, people might actually listen to this and go what.
It's too scary? But yeah, we hope that. We hope that you found this episode worthwhile. Do you have Do you have any thoughts on organ transplants ethically, physically, biologically?
Have you ever had an organ transplant or maybe donated one of your own? You want to write to us and tell us about it, We would love to hear.
Yeah.
Have you ever made it to the end of the organ trail without dying of dysentery?
I did once, but well I did several times. I played on easy mode and I still lossome people.
You monster.
One guy broke a leg and then died of dysentery.
Man, it was rough. Dysentery I think is like the base level, and then there's some other stuff.
Okay, we really had to bring it back there and all.
I think we should.
I really just trying to lighten things up a little bit. Guys, this got pretty got pretty pretty dark here.
I you know, I want to play it again and then name members of our party, like after after you guys and some of our listeners. But I'm afraid of you know, what am I going to do if one of you guys doesn't make it over the river? You know?
Well, speaking of parties, let's have a shout out corner Party, shut Out Corner.
Our first shout out goes to Dakota, who works at the postal service and listens to our show all delivering mail. That's kind of cool, Dakota. Let us know that watch Mojo often uses our videos as a kind of source material for their own YouTube channel, which is kind of what we do with other YouTube channels as well. We'll use references and but we did some checking and they do give us on screen credit with text, so we're
totally cool with that. And last thing, he Dakota wanted us to say hello to Long John and I don't know who that is, but it's it's Dakota's friend the Watch Budget.
They also, I think they did a list a while back where they had different conspiracy type shows and.
We will yeah YouTube conspiracy for you list. So Ben Bolan was and Matt and Matt Frederick we were both on that list.
We were guys. We were all on the list. And next we have Matt s on Twitter. Matt, you said, have you considered doing an episode on the theory that we are living in a simulation? Matt, you also sent Matt S. You also sent a video of Ella Musk discussing this topic, which you, Matt f I am sure enjoyed immensely.
I did.
Yeah, I think I shared it with you guys. Maybe I didn't, Maybe we just talked about it. It's the one where Elon Musk is asked a question about simulated universe theory and he basically says, we have a one in one billion chance of existing in base reality, which if you dig into it a little bit, it's a little off. His numbers are a little off, but it's still fascinating to think that one of the richest humans on the planet believes that.
Next one, we have one via Facebook from Corey C. Thanks for keeping me hip to all the neat, strange and weird things you guys cover. Then we have a little hashtag party here. Hashtags cadouche hashtag all Hail Our age less Overlord Ben hashtag bag of Badger's hashtag the only metal is creatle of filth. Hashtag give Matt his boat back? Hashtag tell Frank I said hi?
Yeah?
Is this someone that knows Frank? Yeah?
You talked about Frank a couple of times. Okay, I think you even mentioned you should say hi. Have you ever see Frank? See Frank say hi to him? He's great guy.
Yeah. IM just wondering if this is someone that knows Frank, Like in the real world, Frank does get around.
Uh maybe I don't.
There men, Yeah, the many faces of Frank, the many faces of Frank. And this thus ends our shout out corner for today, and that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't wait to hear your thoughts.
It's right. Let us know what you think. You can reach us to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on Facebook x and YouTube, on Instagram and TikTok Ork Conspiracy Stuff Show.
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