So a lot of people here don’t realize that any kind of transplant outside of a waiting list is considered a trafficked organ (excluding Iran). Or how cheap it is.

I had kidney failure for many years (btw, being young doesn’t help with wait times except unless maybe if you’re a kid in some cases).

At some point after some years, my dad (who still has a Facebook) started asking for help for a kidney donor (for the swap program thing, basically you donate to someone else on a chain), and immediately started getting messages from people in places like the Philippines “willing” to sell their kidneys. In quotations because you never know how willing they actually are, and even if not under direct pressure, I’d say extreme poverty is still a forceful pressure.

Regardless, the prices they were asking for? Between 5-15k$.

You’d think it would cost more than a used car, but apparently not. I scolded him for even thinking about it - explained that just because you can live with 1 kidney, you’re still more prone to kidney failure yourself now.

I ended up on dialysis for a little over 8 years and essentially lost my 20s to that, but at least when I finally got a transplant I didn’t have to deal with any guilt (came from someone who was braindead - wear your dang bicycle helmets people).

And I’m glad I never even considered that offer - apparently I was destined to get an aggressive cancer after a kidney transplant because I’m part of a very rare estimated 5% of the world population never exposed to an extremely common virus (Epstein-Barr). That cancer would likely not have been caught by an overseas doctor who is doing shady surgeries, and I’d be dead anyways.

So maybe karma does exist (in the psychological/outcome sense at least). I got the good karma and Steve Jobs got the dumbass karma (look up the details of his liver transplant and death. I want to point out, he must’ve been a true asshole to not have a willing live donor for a liver transplant, as it’s actually the easiest of them all to get).