ANGELES CITY – Again making the rounds on Facebook and Messenger is a message warning parents to be wary of van-riding strangers out to abduct children to harvest their bodily organs to be sold by middlemen to wealthy people in need of transplant.
The story has nagged the country for years, but often junked as rumors by law enforcers. In the recent months, social media have again been passing on yarns of attempts to abduct kids, amid reports that some of the children were able to wrest away from suspects pushing them into a waiting van with others already tied up and gagged on board.
As to whether the suspects in abduction cases were really up to plucking out livers, hearts, kidneys or whatever from the bodies of the kids no one has yet confirmed, but such grim extension of abductions is not farfetched.
In several other countries credible people have confirmed not just the existence, but the proliferation of such “body snatchers.” Some say nothing could be farther from the truth in the Philippines where poverty drive people to desperation, including selling their own kidneys.
Way back in 2013, Dr. Dale Archer authored an article in the US titled “Body Snatchers: Organ Harvesting for Profit.”
He wrote:
“Recently in China, a missing 6-year-old boy was found alone in a field, crying. Upon closer inspection, both eyes had been removed, presumably for the corneas.
“In 2012, a young African girl was kidnapped and brought to the UK for the sole purpose of harvesting her organs. She was one of the lucky ones—rescued before she went under the knife. Authorities feel this is just the tip of the iceberg.
“This isn’t just an international occurrence. Kendrick Johnson, a Georgia teen, died at school January 2013. The local sheriff quickly determined the death was a freak accident, that he suffocated after getting stuck in a rolledup mat in the school gym. Johnson’s parents however, could not— would not—accept that. Six months after his death, they obtained a court order to have the body exhumed for an independent autopsy.
“The pathologist was stunned when he found the corpse stuff ed with newspaper. The brain, heart, lungs and liver were missing. He also discovered Johnson’s death was due to blunt force trauma to the right side of his neck. The FBI is now involved in this disturbing case with potentially shattering reverberations.”
Archer quoted one Nancy Scheper-Hughes who, he noted, had spent over ten years studying “the dark side of organ harvesting and trafficking which is driven by greedy middle men and desperate, wealthy recipients.” “Black market organs are being transplanted in New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles at $150,000 a pop. She reports there are ‘broker-friendly’ US hospitals, complete with surgeons who either don’t know or don’t care where the organs come from,” he said.
Archer also noted that “organ donation is only possible if the organ in question has blood and oxygen fl owing through it until the time of harvesting. A living donor can give a whole kidney, a portion of their liver, lung, intestine or pancreas. Otherwise, the donor must be declared brain dead while circulation and oxygenation remain intact.”
At the time Archer wrote his story in 2013, an estimated 120,771 people were waiting for an organ, and that 18 would die every day while waiting.
While some organs are derived from persons who have just died, Archer said “in the worst case it involves kidnapping for the purpose of organ harvesting. Always at the end of the chain is a wealthy recipient, willing to pay big bucks with no questions asked.”
In 2016, reporter Theodore Shoebat reported that in Mexico in South America, a Mexican drug cartel has been involved in “kidnapping of thousands of innocent people.
They open up their bodies, rip out their organs, and sell them.”
“They are also cannibalizing the organs In satanic rituals and selling each body for $100,000 each,” he wrote.
Shoebat also reported that “in the Villa Victor-Chinicuila, which lies right near Jalisco, a truck was stopped at a checkpoint and inside was absolutely horrifying: frozen bodies of children and others, all with missing organs.”
He also said “FBI agents are now in possession of photographs that prove organ trafficking in Mexico and that they are killing migrants. The images show mutilated bodies, with the chest and belly open with surgical incisions that lead to the extraction of livers, kidneys, hearts, to mention only a few.”
The Express Tribune writer Christ Cork also noted, however, the proliferation of fake news about organ harvesting spreading mostly via social media.
“I have no doubt whatsoever that children are being kidnapped, but equally have found not a shred of verifiable evidence that they are being fed into the national or global illegal organ trade. Think before you press ‘enter’ or ‘send’, check sources and origins and set your credulity filters to ‘on’,” he advised.
