A first-of-its-kind program has been launched to identify human rights abuses surrounding the trafficking of organs.
Organs Watch was opened on November 8 by two professors from the University of California, Berkeley, and two professors from Columbia University Medical School. Located at Berkeley, the center "will investigate reports and rumors of human rights abuses surrounding organ trafficking, identify hot spots where abuse may be occurring, and begin to define the line between ethical transplant surgery and practices that are exploitative or corrupt," Berkeley said in a statement.
"Transplant surgery has entered a global market, and we need to keep a close watch on that. In the organs trade business, abuses creep in before you know it," said Nancy Scheper-Hughes, one of the Berkeley professors who launched the center.
According to Berkeley, the four founding professors will travel abroad to research the organ trade business. The Soros Foundation's Open Society Institute has provided a two-year grant of $230,000, and Berkeley has provided $160,000.
The first call for an organs watch center came in a 1997 report from the Bellagio Task Force on Securing Bodily Integrity for the Socially Disadvantaged in Transplant Surgery, which was in part headed by Scheper-Hughes. The task force concluded that trade in human body parts was taking advantage of deprived people and putting them at risk.
For Your Information:
UC, Berkeley news release
http://www.urel.berkeley.edu/urel_1/CampusNews/PressReleases/releases/11-03-1999b.htmlOrgan Watch websites
http://yana.sscl.berkeley.edu/~orgwatch/
http://www.organwatch.org/
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