The Red Market (27 page)

1
There is a long and convoluted philosophical and theological tradition on the existence or lack of existence of a soul that I am not qualified to engage in. The concept of a soul is useful to parse out the difference between the specialness of animated humans and the simple physical matter that makes us up. There is a clear difference between the living and dead, and that specialness—whatever it may be—is the rock I’ve built this book upon.

2
There is a wealth of academic literature on the social side effects of selling kidneys. While there are many active proponents of organ markets, those articles are most often written by economists and transplant surgeons. For some representative examples of studies see Lawrence Cohen’s “Where It Hurts,” which appeared in a 1999 issue of
Dædalus
. Or the straightforwardly name named article “Economic and Health Consequences of Selling a Kidney in India” by Madhav Goyal et al., in the October 2002 issue of
JAMA
. Also see the bibliography of this book.

3
Richard Titmuss,
The Gift Relationship
(London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1970), 215.

4
Here, and in many other parts of this book, I have changed names, either at the request of my sources or to protect people from reprisals.

5
There is a double standard in Indian law that allows local medical students to study bones that were robbed from graves; however, it is illegal to sell those same bones to foreigners. This is because the law that legislated away the bone business was essentially a trade law, not a criminal one. It would make more sense to ban the practice altogether.

6
Michael Sappol, “The Odd Case of Charles Knowlton: Anatomical Performance, Medical Narrative, and Identity in Antebellum America,”
Bulletin of the History of Medicine
83, no. 3 (2009): 467.

7
Michael Sappol,
A Traffic in Dead Bodies
(Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2002), 94.

8
Mark Fineman, “A Serene, Spiritual Mecca Has Become a Nation of Assassins,”
Chicago Tribune,
September 27, 1985.

9
Mark Fineman, “Living Off the Dead Is a Dying Trade in Calcutta,”
Los Angeles Times,
February 19, 1991.

10
In South India names are often preceded by strings of initials. While there is no family name as there is in the West, the initials often indicate where someone was born and their father’s name and religious affiliation. In accordance with the custom, I have only listed the initials throughout the book.

11
In a coincidence that I have yet to understand, organ brokers across India often have a second business running tea stalls. Perhaps it is because stall owners tend to know many people who can afford little else than a
2 cup of chai and are easy targets for organ schemes.

12
Leslie Sharp,
Strange Harvest
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 166.

13
Ibid.

14
Arthur Caplan, “Transplantation at Any Price?”
American Journal of Transplantation
4, no. 12 (2004): 1933.

15
Plagued by scandals like the one I examine in an earlier chapter, adoptions in India have come under increasing regulation that requires more documentation and paperwork. However, there is debate over whether the new rules have done anything at all to decrease instances of trafficking in adoption networks.

16
On September 11, 2001, tens of thousands of Americans all signed up to donate blood at once. Hospitals had to turn people away. Now, on the anniversary of the attacks, hospitals run bustling blood drives across the country.

17
Richard Titmuss,
The Gift Relationship,
160.

18
For an excellent analysis of the clinical trial lifestyle as well as the penchant that the drug business has for doctoring data, see Carl Elliott’s groundbreaking book
White Coat, Black Hat: Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2010). His analysis of drug industry charlatans, professional lab rats, and corruptible practitioners will make you very wary of your medicine cabinet.

19
Adriana Petryna, “Ethical Variability: Drug Development and Globalizing Clinical Trials,”
American Ethnologist
32, no. 2 (2005): 185.

20
Melinda Cooper, “Experimental Labour—Offshoring Clinical Trials to China,”
East Asian Science, Technology and Society
2, no. 1 (2008): 8.

21
Pictures of one-eyed goats are only a Google search away.

22
Ann S. Anagnost, “Strange Circulations: The Blood Economy in Rural China,”
Economy and Society
35, no. 4 (November 2006): 509–29.

23
Melinda Cooper, “Experimental Labour,” 16.

24
This is somewhat softened by the bewildering world of international protocol and commerce, because the Chinese government generally ignores WTO demands and frequently allows domestic pharmaceutical companies to put out copyright-infringing copycat drugs.

25
Jonathan Weiner,
Long for This World: The Strange Science of Immortality
(New York: Ecco, 2010), 11.

26
Catherine Waldby and Robert Mitchell,
Tissue Economies: Blood, Organs, and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 177.