While it is most commonly believed that trafficking only takes places for commercial sexual exploitation or for forced labor, trafficking in fact takes many forms such as trafficking for organ trade among others. In most of the world, laws specifically ban the sale of organs but due to a high demand for organs and with long waiting lists for donors in countries such as the U.S a market has emerged for illegal trafficking and trade of organs.
Black Market organ trade was considered a myth until recently evidence has proved that there are signs of it and it is starting to become a growing problem. Organ trafficking occurs in three ways. Firstly, there are cases where people use force or deceive the victims into giving up an organ. Secondly, there have been cases where victims agree to sell an organ and result in being cheated by not being paid fully or at all. Thirdly, vulnerable persons are treated for an ailment which sometimes doesn’t exist and their organ is removed without their knowledge.
There is a high demand in the United States for organ transplants, in the year 2004, United States Doctors performed 24,900 lifesaving organ transplants. The main reason why there has been a major demand for organ trade on the black market is that that right now there is a waiting list that features more than 80,000 people waiting for an organ donor. "In the United States, a new person is added to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) list every 14 minutes," UNOS spokesperson Anne Paschke told National Geographic News. With so many patients needed transplants and much less willing donors the waiting time is extremely long. “In 2002 over 6,000 Americans died while waiting for organs, according to UNOS (United Network of Organ Sharing) data”. With some cases patients might not have enough time to wait for a donor legally or else they will die so they will resort to the black market. Right now on the black market the commonly