The trade in human liver lobes: bioviolence against organ sellers in Bangladesh

Abstract

AbstractThe rapid growth in organ transplantation has created an illicit trade in human organs. The kidney trade has flourished in the last few decades, but in the last few years this has been coupled with an emerging liver trade. This article examines the liver trade sourced from poor sellers in Bangladesh. Through ethnographic fieldwork, I investigate how a landless farmer and a village housewife both sell their liver lobes on the black market, and how the recipients undergo liver transplants in Bangladesh and India. I reveal that liver selling, like kidney selling, is primarily driven by the sellers’ debt. What is surprising, though, in this anthropological analysis is that microcredit, a Nobel Prize‐winning economic operation, has negatively contributed to organ selling in Bangladesh. I discover that the liver trade leads to tragic outcomes for both sellers and recipients: the sellers could not repay their loans by selling a liver lobe, while one of the recipients died just over a month after the surgery. I therefore argue that liver trade is advancing through a series of disturbing ironies, resulting in bioviolence, exploitation, and suffering for the vulnerable victims.