The Transplant Trade (C4): ASK those who hand over money for organs why their action is right and they all give the same answer: "Because we want to live".

This documentary spent 90 minutes debating the issue with patients at the centre of the arguments - those equally desperate to buy and sell. The figures speak for themselves. Demand outstrips supply. Some 20,000 people in Britain are desperate for a new kidney. Last year, only 1,700 received one. Small wonder more and more Britons are going abroad to buy and have the operation.

In poorer countries, like India, there are plenty of living donors willing to hand over a kidney, half a liver, an eye or a testicle for financial reward. Prices were bandied about - $125,000 for a kidney, and $24,000 for a heart, lung or liver. It depends where you go in search of the organ, and how much is charged by your broker and the hospital where the operation is performed. Just as estate agents demand commission for selling your house, brokers take a cut. They're getting rich through their own national health service. One contributor noted the conflict over the figures, but said: "Someone is making a great deal of money".

Around the world it's illegal to buy and sell organs, but it continues all the same. All sides of the argument were put forward. The transplant trade creates a social division between those who can afford to buy and those who can't. On the other hand, selling an organ in a poor country can mean a better standard of living for the donor.

The arguments were put all the more effectively by bringing them down to a human level. Donald went looking for a kidney on the Internet. A broker in Hollywood denied trading in human misery.

One Indian, who made £12 a month and lived in abject poverty, told how selling a kidney would help his family survive. It didn't. The operation left him in permanent pain and unable to work. "Now my body is like a rag doll, I wish I hadn't done it," he said.

Another Indian died before he was able to raise enough money to buy a new kidney.

MEP Robert Evans views the trade as a gross violation of human rights. He equates it with child sex tourism and is introducing a Bill in the European Parliament making it illegal to go anywhere in the world to buy organs. Would he think differently if he needed a transplant urgently?

Bringing the transplant trade under Government control may be the only way to end this kind of exploitation.

Orlando Bloom - LORD OF THE RING- - see tomorrow's Northern Echo.

Published: 29/04/2004