Sometimes, the remains are used to save lives, such as in the cases of burn victims. The tissue helps the blind to see, through cornea transplants, and the lame to walk, through knee-repair surgery. But the trade is also driven by greed and vanity, including demands for penis enlargement, breast reconstruction and nose jobs – all aided with human tissue.
In this ghoulish trade, Ukraine is at the center of a poorly regulated industry.
The nation is a main supplier of human tissue. Out of 28 foreign establishments registered with U.S. Food and Drug Administration to export tissue, 20 are from Ukraine. It is all the more disgusting that the Ukrainian Health Ministry denies that any tissue from Ukraine gets exported.
To put it mildly, this is not the case. According to the U.S. FDA data, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, since 2002 Ukraine’s state-owned BioImplant company and its German partner have collectively exported to the United States more than 1,000 shipments of tissue – mostly bones and skin.
Is it a wonder, then, that repeated Kyiv Post requests for information from the Health Ministry on why many of local morgues and hospitals have FDA registration were left unanswered?
While no one wants to ban implants from human tissue, much more control of the industry is obviously needed.
Specifically, every single case of consent that relatives of the dead give to donate organs should be audited closely. In many nations, such as the United States, the living are asked whether they are willing to be donors in death. For many, it is an act of generosity. But it should be the person’s choice. In the drive for profits, it is wrong to pressure bereaved relatives into signing consent forms to harvest their loved ones. It is even criminal if forgeries and deception are involved.
In this, Ukraine’s health authorities are going the wrong way. Instead of requiring clear, written consent, they announced plans in April to change the law so that automatic consent is presumed for everyone. If that happens, the current flow of body parts abroad will increase, feeding the growing multimillion-dollar industry constantly in demand of more dead bodies.
There are other problems with this trade, including the possibility of infections and even deaths for transplant recipients. The story is laudably chronicled in a four-part series by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The non-profit organization is based in Washington, D.C., but relies on journalists worldwide – including, the Kyiv Post’s Vlad Lavrov, we are proud to say.
Such journalism is becoming increasingly rare in this age of declining advertising revenue and smaller newsroom budgets. But, as shown by the four-part series, governments and businesses don’t always act in the public’s interest. And it has long been the role of good journalism to bring these instances to everyone’s attention, which, it looks, might lead to the specific results. On July 17, Interpol secretary general Ron Noble pledged to track illicit trade in human tissue in response to the story. This is progress, already, but authorities globally need to follow through with action.
