Rabbi Izhak Levy Rosenbaum of Brooklyn has been arrested for running an international human organ selling ring. Rosenbaum’s role was disclosed to the FBI by an anthropologist, Nancy Scheper-Hughes of the University of California, Berkeley, who has been studying organ markets. She described him as the “main broker” in the international trafficking of human organs — allegedly taken from “vulnerable” people in Moldova, Israel and possibly other countries and sold to wealthy recipients in the United States. Rosenbaum called himself “the matchmaker.”
Witnesses reportedly described Rosenbaum, 58, as a “thug” to forced crying sellers to give up their organs and allegedly pulling a gun (which he was licensed to carry) on reluctant sellers and (according to one quoted source) saying, “You’re here. A deal is a deal. Now, you’ll give us a kidney or you’ll never go home.”
An undercover agent was reportedly able to get Rosenbaum to admit in a sting that he had been “doing this a long time” and had moved “quite a lot” of kidneys.
Some of the people, including some from Israel, would sell their kidneys for $10,000 and Rosenbaum would allegedly sell them for as much as $160,000.
Rosenbaum is a member of the Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn. Orthodox rabbis in New York and New Jersey have been clogging the criminal courts and blogs of late, here and here and here and here.
Rosenbaum had told neighbors that he was in the construction business while the FBI says that he told its informant that he should be called “the matchmaker.” Of course, Jewish matchmakers used to focus on marital rather than medical unions. Yenta might find you a doctor, but would normally leave your kidneys alone:
For the story, click here.
Buddha:
“Between you and Byrne/Birther, you’re both providing an excellent example of Hannah Ardent was talking about when she mentioned the banality of evil.”
Coming from a Marxist apologist (Hannah Arendt), it really doesn’t bother me too greatly. I should also mention she was Martin Heidegger’s little whore apologist as well. She seemed to have a thing for totalitarians of all stripes (according to your definitions).
If you don’t know, Heidegger was a fellow traveler of Hitlers and although she (Arendt) broke it off in the 30’s she was back with him after the war and trying to rehabilitate his “tarnished” image.
So Hannah Arendt isn’t exactly someone I would be throwing around as a paragon of virtue.
Did I mention she blamed the Jews for their persecution by the NAZI’s. A bit like blaming a child for being molested dont you think.
What most people don’t know is that organ procurement organizations and tissue banks can make up to $2 million off a donated whole body. This is a $20 billion a year business in the United States. If we were talking about copper and Bolivia, the issues would be crystal clear. The current system is unjust and immoral.
If you live in a state that has adopted the 2006 Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, it is presumed that you are an organ donor until they can find evidence of a contrary position. This includes hooking you up to life support systems even if you have an Advanced Healthcare Directive that says otherwise. They can keep your body alive until they can talk to your family to find out what your true intentions were.
Under this new Act, you have the right to refuse to participate in an organ harvesting procedure, but you must register your desire with a known organ registry. There is only one organ registry in operation that allows you to record your preferences, including allowing for the contingency that just compensation might become legal at some future date.
Check out http://www.DoNotTransplant.com to learn more about your rights under the law
You’ve truly sunk to a new low, IS.
Yeah, where you used to be just annoying, you’ve gone straight to vile. The beauty of this is that you probably can’t even see it.
Spectacular.
Between you and Byrne/Birther, you’re both providing an excellent example of Hannah Ardent was talking about when she mentioned the banality of evil.
IS writes: and abortion isnt commerce? tell that to planned parenthood. I guess they just perform them for purely altruistic reasons.
no. abortion is not commerce. what makes you think planned parenthood engages in commerce? they, and other medical practitioners, perform abortion because it is a legal alternative for women. look, I don’t know why you want to walk down this road again. you already know what I think.
did you think you could use the organs for sale crime as a way to reintroduce your opposition to abortion? did you think that you could make some new, effective argument?
sorry. no sale
“Extrapolating from organs I can also assume that neither one of you minds being taxed since your basic premise is that your life is not your own and the state has control of your existence at a very fundamental and profound level.”
IS,
One needs a basic understanding of the role of government to carry on this discussion. You are blinded by your political philosophy and by what I can only assume is an attitude that cares only for yourself, family and possibly friends. That is to me immorality.
Now you accuse me of believing that my life is not my own because I believe in taxation, which is not only a faulty premise, but untrue. You are the one who is willing to cede control of your existence to a corporate world that will rule you more viciously than you could possibly imagine. Recognizing a State, under the right circumstance is a realization that all of us humans are in this thing called life together. I presume that you would prefer we return to a predatory existence with the toughest ruling. If the world you desire comes to pass I can only hope for your sake that you were left a lot of money, or struck it rich. If not you really will be an Indentured Servant and leading a life no one would envy.
“India is a shit hole of a country”
It really would help if you understood history or politics before casting aspersions on other people or places. The Indian culture is perhaps one of the oldest, continuous literate cultures in the world today. Their cities, like Mohenj Hodaro circa 1,500BCE had a sanitation/water system that surpassed anything in Europe until the 19th Century.
What created modern India was the effects of what happens when a nation meets up with a colonizer that has better weapons. To think of Indians as backwards is to show a lack of historical knowledge and an overweening prejudice that is not supportable.
However, judging by your comments and what seems to be your governmental desires you may very well be in favor of whoever has the most weapons win. That is your right, but please don’t pretend that there is anything that would be recognized as morality in that attitude. It’s an attitude of “I, Me, Me, Mine” and its weakness occurs when you run into someone with more power and I’m not talking government, but “free market”
Corporatists.
gwlsm:
and abortion isnt commerce? tell that to planned parenthood. I guess they just perform them for purely altruistic reasons.
IS writes: I would sell my organs if I could, either during life or after death to help my family. I am very serious about it as you are about abortion. I ask what is the difference? either people have a right to their bodies or they do not. It cannot be both ways.
me: sure it can be both ways unless you are the sort of person who can’t tolerate ambivalence or have the ability to hold two opposing ideas in your head simultaneously.
abortion is a private medical decision a woman makes in consultation with her physician. selling organs is commerce.
IS: India is a shit hole of a country and on it’s way to becoming a free country, it will take some time for them to dispatch the caste system and other statist elements in their society.
me: the caste system is officially over and has been for decades. it is also a democracy. I don;t know what you mean about how it is on its way to becoming free.
IS: Being forced to sell your organs and being able to sell them because you want to are 2 different things and you should be able to understand that.
me: what makes you think that when pressure is bought to bear someone wont sell a kidney or one that belongs to their child? or if this is the only way to pay a small debt and one is being squeezed? or to feed the rest of your family? people choose to do many things when they don’t think they have a choice
IS: Being on a donor list has nothing to do with this. And what makes you think a doctor would not help you into the next life if you were on a donor list and he needed a lung or a heart and yours matched?
me: of course it does unless your reasons for selling an organ are purely craven. and do you really think being on a donor list makes you vulnerable to having your body hijacked?
IS: And you are right I am not on a donor list, I am not allowed to give blood either but not by choice.
me: if you cant donate blood then you can’t sell an organ. it’d be useless
GWLSM:
I would sell my organs if I could, either during life or after death to help my family. I am very serious about it as you are about abortion. I ask what is the difference? either people have a right to their bodies or they do not. It cannot be both ways.
India is a shit hole of a country and on it’s way to becoming a free country, it will take some time for them to dispatch the caste system and other statist elements in their society. Being forced to sell your organs and being able to sell them because you want to are 2 different things and you should be able to understand that.
Being on a donor list has nothing to do with this. And what makes you think a doctor would not help you into the next life if you were on a donor list and he needed a lung or a heart and yours matched?
And you are right I am not on a donor list, I am not allowed to give blood either but not by choice.
Mike S writes you’re on the side of immorality and tyranny on this one. You really should think this one through and try to ignore your predetermined political proclivity.
you raise some valuable points about what happens in a society where the poor are nothing more than keepers of future organs. and don’t think that this does not already happen. it does in India where children are also sold into slavery and prostitution to pay off relatively small debts. life is cheap there and the poor have little recourse. IS I think was trying to make a cheap point and even I don’t think he was serious about his right to sell his organs.
if he were he would be on a donor list already. maybe he is, but somehow i don’t think so
hey old guys and people with disabilities good news from Rohm Emmanuel on health care:
“Emanuel, however, believes that “communitarianism” should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia”
And people call free market capitalists evil, we don’t come anywhere near this nor even think that way. We would say the free market obviates the need for rationing. And I am disgusting, when they take you away and stick a needle in your arm because you are no longer productive you might want to reassess your thoughts on the free market and the individual freedom it requires.
Justme and Mike Spindell:
I am a very moral person and I believe I am being consistent with that morality.
I disagree with both of you that organ harvesting is immoral if it is a mutually agreeable transaction. In Mike’s doomsday scenario I would agree it would not be a good thing.
I have a right to my life and my body, by your statements I will assume you both to be anti-abortion which would be consistent. You are both assuming the state has a right to tell me as an individual what I can and cannot do with my body. In a truly free society I should be allowed to do what I want with my kidneys, my liver, my lungs. You cannot have it both ways. I am either an individual or I am at the mercy of the state.
Extrapolating from organs I can also assume that neither one of you minds being taxed since your basic premise is that your life is not your own and the state has control of your existence at a very fundamental and profound level.
A free market in organs would alleviate a shortage and probably lower the cost. This would help many people who are suffering because of a lack of available organs and it would give people an opportunity to help themselves.
I could use a hundred thousand right now, but I don’t think I would sell a kidney for that amount of money. Now if they offered 500k it might be a different story.
I seriously doubt we would see a Brave New World scenario with organ farms, in the next few years we are going to be able grow organs in the laboratory using our own cells or we are going to be able to genetically engineer pigs to have organs that will not cause rejection in human recipients. At this point I could make a comment on Obama’s health care program but I wont, just saying that says it all.
Justme:
why do I disgust you? Is it because I believe in free markets and liberty or is it because you have a religious prohibition against organ selling by individuals for profit? I hope it is because of a religious belief.
“this is a serious subject and should not be taken lightly. I for one believe an individual has a right to sell his or her organs for whatever they can get and it should not be illegal.”
IS,
This is a serious subject, I agree. due to its’ seriousness though one who views it from a strictly “free market” approach, as I assume you do, is blind to the immorality and misery that would ride in the wake of its becoming legitimate. The rich will have a new utility from the poor. People, without means, would be forced financially to live in organ farms, where their organs and those of their children would be taken for relative pittances, compared to what the “farmers” will make from their sale. If one needs an organ to survive then one would have to be wealthy enough to afford it, or bankrupt themselves to keep on living. We would be reduced in time to a totalitarian world, without mercy or morality, run by major corporations, with their own private armed forces. You are blinding yourself with political philosophy, which of any stripe, is not the way to run a country, or a world. This is indeed serious and the soul, however one defines it, of humanity is at stake. Sorry to see you’re on the side of immorality and tyranny on this one. You really should think this one through and try to ignore your predetermined political proclivity.
Servant,
While I don’t actually expect that someone so lacking a moral compass that they can’t figure out the reasons why commoditizing human flesh might be a bad idea would be impressed by this, I feel the need to say it anyway.
You are a bad person, and you disgust me.
this is a serious subject and should not be taken lightly. I for one believe an individual has a right to sell his or her organs for whatever they can get and it should not be illegal. We then might not have a shortage of organs which is the reason this mess came about.
I think if you can have an abortion you certainly should be allowed to sell a kidney or a cornea or part of your liver or a lung. It is your body and in a truly free society it is up to you as to how and when you dispose of it or parts thereof.
We should also be allowed to die how and when we choose.
Rafflaw,
I can see you are no baseball fan. I was of course referring to that great Hall of Fame Catcher and renowned mystic Yogi Berra. This is a spiritual leader known for his pithy short sayings, koans perhaps, that when pondered were full of content beyond their brevity. For instance:
“It ain’t over, til it’s over!”
Meditate on that in all its’ permutations and you might well discover the meaning and purpose of life.
Mike S.
What does Yogi Bear have to do with organ transplants? Was BooBoo involved too??
There was a story on This American LIfe, the weekly radio show Ira Glass does. The theme that week was about matchmakers and it featured an orthodox jewish woman who had missed the marriage window for one reason or another and by serendipity became an organ broker. she found donors who were willing to give a kidney to someone who needed one, all within the orthodox community in Boro Park but as far as I know never benefitted from this financially. wouldn’t it be ironic if this rabbi and the ones arrested in the NJ sting last week received divine inspiration for their sickening activities from her?
Mike,
It may be a growth industry, but as in any business venture the question arises about the quality of work one get’s from a henchman.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0_1F0_20mE
I know the good Prof. has recently dipped into this deep comedy well, but the water is so good.
Organ theft I predict is a growth industry, if it already isn’t.
Imagine if you will a very rich person, who needs an organ for either them self or a loved one. These people will not honor some waiting list, or a Doctor’s judgment. As poverty spreads and population rises this will become a very frequent occurrence.
Also too, anyone who puts too much trust in a divinity degree,
religious certification and the honesty of an individual because of same is a fool. If you think about it what better occupation for a sociopath than Rabbi, Priest, Reverend, Imam or Yogi?
Parts is parts. Unless you are Mickey Mantel and can buy your own and then drink it away, yet again. Parts is parts.
This does bother me, greatly. But then again, it goes to show you that REAL health care is only fro the rich and richer.