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Have guys awakened after a party to find their kidneys stolen?

24-Apr-1998

Dear Cecil:

Greetings, Master. I've checked the archives and found no reference to the following story, which is supposed to have come from the Daily Texan, the University of Texas newspaper. Is there any truth to it?

This guy went out last Saturday night to a party and had a couple of beers. Some girl seemed to like him and invited him to another party. He quickly agreed. She took him to a party in some apartment and they continued to drink, and even got involved with some other drugs (unknown which). The next thing he knew, he woke up completely naked in a bathtub filled with ice. He was still feeling the effects of the drugs but looked around to see he was alone. He looked down at his chest, which had "CALL 911 OR YOU WILL DIE" written on it in lipstick. He saw a phone was on a stand next to the tub, so he picked it up and dialed. He explained to the EMS operator what the situation was and that he didn't know where he was, what he took, or why he was really calling. She advised him to get out of the tub and look himself over in the mirror. He did, only to find two nine-inch slits on his lower back. She told him to get back in the tub immediately, and they sent a rescue team over. They found his kidneys were stolen. They are worth $10,000 each on the black market. . . .

--MLScola, via AOL

Cecil replies:

Dozens of folks have written me about this. My initial reaction was, well, at least now we know where they found the people for the first O.J. jury. Who could possibly believe this absurd urban legend? Then again, you did send the story to me first. Many goofs instead would have spammed it to everybody they know via E-mail, thereby proving that the missing organ we should really be worried about is the one between the ears.  The facts:

• There are no documented cases of kidneynapping, or for that matter any killing, abduction, or mutilation for purposes of organ theft. The National Kidney Foundation, which fears this persistent myth will scare off donors, has asked victims of organ theft to step forward. So far no takers.

• While I suppose it's possible to remove somebody's kidneys with a paper plate and an X-acto knife, as a practical matter it can't be done. The operation customarily takes a five-person surgical team working for three or four hours in a sterile operating room. Much of the equipment required (anesthesia machines, operating tables) is bulky and not the sort of thing you could readily sneak into an apartment, hotel room, etc. The tissue and blood types of the donor and donee must be precisely matched; you can't just grab the first mope you see in a bar.

• None of the checkable details in the story pans out. The Daily Texan says it never ran the kidney theft story, though it has run several denials. This is the third time the UT version of the legend has made the rounds.

• The original version, in which a guy meets a woman in a New York bar and later wakes up kidneyless, dates back at least to March 1991. (See folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand's 1993 book, The Baby Train and Other Lusty Urban Legends.) It may have originated in a 1989 incident in England. A Turkish man told authorities he'd been lured to the UK by a job offer, only to have a kidney stolen. An investigation revealed that the man had advertised in a Turkish newspaper to sell his kidney, found a buyer, and evidently sought revenge after failing to collect full payment. (See the Urban Legends Reference Pages, www.snopes.com.)

The only thing that makes kidneynapping even slightly believable is the very real market for transplantable human organs, in which demand exceeds supply. (See David Rothman's March 26, 1998, piece in the New York Review of Books.) In India the desperately poor can sell a kidney for $1,000 to $1,500. The People's Republic of China doesn't even bother to pay; they extract organs from executed prisoners. Two men were arrested in New York in early 1998 for offering to sell kidneys and other organs of executed Chinese. A related legend, common in some developing countries, has babies being kidnapped by rich Westerners so they can be stripped for parts. In 1993 in Guatemala, one American tourist was beaten to death and another was jailed after they were falsely accused of babynapping. Stories of third-world babynappings aren't that far-fetched; black-market adoption rings allegedly do it. But nobody north of the border has that kind of excuse.

GOING FOR THE KIDNEYS

Dear Cecil:

With reference to your column about losing a kidney after a party, check out this story from the San Francisco Examiner headlined "Poor Robbed of Kidneys in India." Urban myth, heh? --Dave B., via the Internet

Cecil replies:

Dave refers to a May, 1998 Associated Press report from New Delhi telling of the arrest of 10 people, including three transplant surgeons and a hospital owner, after a patient claimed he'd been lured to the hospital and robbed of a kidney. Supposedly the hospital had promised the man a job in Singapore and told him a medical exam was needed to obtain a visa.

Aspects of this story are fishy.  What did the surgeons think, the victim wouldn't notice he'd had major surgery? However, similar allegations about the hospital had been made earlier. In one case a mentally retarded boy disappeared only to show up three months later $750 richer and a kidney shy.

Even if these accusations turn out to be true, there are big differences between organ theft in India and the stories circulating in North America, in which guys meet beautiful strangers only to awaken kidneyless later in a bathtub of ice. In parts of India it's still legal to sell a kidney and clinics openly remove organs from the poor and transplant them in the rich. (Maybe not for long, though. In 1995 the Indian parliament forbade organ sales except to close relatives, but this has not been ratified by all states.) In the U.S. and Canada organ sales are illegal and the delicate business of stealing the organs, matching donors and recipients, and doing the transplants would have to be conducted entirely underground. That's highly improbable and hasn't occurred as far as we know. Then again, you read about Jack Kevorkian removing kidneys from people he helped commit suicide and you think: just wait.

--CECIL ADAMS

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