Trafficking in children for medical exploitation

Children are purchased or kidnapped from parents and sold to medical facilities for the purposes of medical experimentation and as sources of organ transplants. Frequently these are infants who have handicaps.

The WHO noted in 1991 that there was clear evidence of commercial traffic in human organs, particularly for living donors who were unrelated to the recipients, and that safeguards were required to protect children from such threat. In 1994 in Guatemala there were attacks on tourists alleged to have been stealing babies for adoption or for their body parts. The media there reported prices for organs in the USA as: US$150,000 for a liver; US$100,000 for a heart; and US$100,000 for a set of lungs. A number of cases of organ trafficking from other Latin American countries have been well documented; the victims are typically homeless tramps. There is also evidence of "orphans", including children bought or snatched from their parents, being adopted on a regular basis by parents in industrialized countries.