It always drives me nuts when people say “that cost an arm and a leg!”
- like, do you even know how much an arm and a leg cost?
Didn’t think so.
Hey everyone, Laci Green here for a very morbid DNews.
Running a little short on cash?
Well, you’re probably vaguely aware that there exists a black market for body parts.
Combined with legal medical demand, these forces essentially set the price of your body
parts.
In theory, if you could harvest every organ and chemical - your dead body could go for
up to $45M. But Medical Transcription estimates that the average price of a dead body is worth
closer to $550,000, and it’s only a few key body parts that drive up the price.
The most expensive LEGAL part you can sell is your heart - it goes for almost $1M legally.
And they say you can’t buy love...too bad you’ll be dead then.
Your liver goes for $557,000 legally, and kidneys go for $262,000 each in the US.
The reason why these particular organs are so expensive is because of widespread diabetes
and heart disease.
Of course, on the black market - they’re much cheaper, sometimes 10% of the cost.
As for the rest of your body parts, the price pales in comparison.
Your skin - a measly $10 an inch, your stomach - 500 bucks.
And your eyes?
Only $1500 each.
I spend more on making my eyes see than they’re actually worth!
This whole black market thing is a real downer….
….In more ways than one.
The black market for body parts cropped up in response to worldwide organ shortages.
In the US alone, there are currently 123,000 people waiting for organs - 100,000 of those
people are waiting for kidneys!
Meanwhile, there are only about 14,000 organs are donated per year, mostly from the deceased.
Every day, about 18 people die waiting for a transplant.
That’s a big gap between supply and demand - and so became the black market.
The black market’s organ exchange is populated by organs from multiple sources - some are
very poor living donors trying to make some money.
Some are from prisoners (dead and alive), others from looted graves, and another source
is paying off morticians.
The organ broker will pay the funeral home to take the parts out of the body and then
sew it up so nobody knows.
It’s pretty dark stuff.
While there’s not much you can do about crooked morticians, we can all help to undermine
these crazy unethical practices by becoming organ donors.
All it takes is putting yourself down as an organ donor for when you die, which you can
do at organdonor.gov.
Currently, a little under half of Americans are registered as organ donors.
Which is a shame because the organs save other peoples’ lives after you’re gone, and
they also help scientists find cures for diseases.
Thanks for watching DNews everyone, we’ll see you next time!