June 17, 2016 • 53 mins
For the majority of human history, a failing vital organ was a death sentence. Yet hard-won lessons from countless tragic medical experiments have given modern humans the amazing ability to swap a failing organ from a healthy one, often with good odds of surviving the operation. So where do the organs come from? Is there really any truth to the rumors of an illegal organ trade?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
(00:20):
name is Noel. They called me Ben and you are you,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Today's podcast comes oddly enough, from a a pretty tasteless
joke that we made a while back, and I don't
remember if it made it to the air, did it
it did? Yeah, we were joking about the Oregon Trail
(00:41):
because someone suggested we we cover the topic of illegal
organ trafficking, which is a great suggestion. And then we
all died of dysentery. And then we all died of
dysentery in the middle of spoiler alert. Yeah, yeah, because
we were dumb enough to start the game as farmers. Uh.
Then never do that way harder. But yeah, we were
(01:03):
kicking around, just terrible titles. Uh, and one of those was,
of course the organ Trail. Well if you say it
like that, yeah you can go either way. Well title aside,
this is I don't apologize for that title. I didn't
I just said title aside. Uh okay, so uh we
(01:27):
think this is a complex, global and continual phenomenon and
it is worth exploring in depth because, aside from some
maybe scare pieces that pop up at a slow day
in the news cycle, this is not really examined and
the causes of it aren't examined as well. There is
(01:49):
a lot of stuff they don't want you to know
about organ transplants, the organ trade in general, what has
been called the red market. So I at first I
wanted to ask you guys, uh, Matt nol, those are
real names, sorry for everyone? Should we apologize for that one?
(02:09):
I don't know what you're talking about. That's a good point.
So have have you, guys ever known or been acquainted
with someone who received an organ transplant? I could not
come up with a good example when I was going
back through my life. Um, if you count bone marrow,
which I think you should, yeah, then yes. I know.
(02:30):
It's an intense process as far as like getting on
a list, getting matched with the right candidate, and then
actually getting the procedure done and having everything booked because
it is a very timely process, you know, once everything
goes through, uh, And there's a lot of uncertainty, and
you even hear stories about people trying to get higher
up on the list by you know, greasing some poems
(02:52):
here and there, you know. I mean there's a lot
of steak obviously, and I won't say who this person was,
just to you know, maintain their their privacy, but yeah,
it was it was very nerve nerve wracking, just wondering
when it was gonna happen, when it was going to
go through, and when it did go through, if everything
was gonna work out correctly. Yeah, because even with everything
(03:15):
going as well as possible, there's still a there's still
a significant risk. And it's not like if that one
doesn't work out, they're just gonna give you another one.
I mean, that's the one that you get, and then
if it doesn't look out, if you make it, and
you have to start the whole process over. So that
is a terrifying prospect. Let's let's talk about organs first, because,
(03:37):
as you know, this podcast is part of how stuff works,
so we want to start at the most basic thing. Organs.
They're one of the few things that everybody has in common.
Everyone who is involved with this show, we all have organs. Yes,
everyone listening to this show hopefully has organs. Maybe there's
(03:58):
some sort of machine consciousness listening there, and that gets
into a conversation about what would constitute and an organ. Yeah,
maybe Dick Cheney is listening with his robotic heart that
just constantly circulates blood instead of pumping. That's a pacemaker.
That's not, isn't it. It's not. He doesn't have a
pacemaker anymore now, it's just a constant flow of blood.
(04:20):
There's no he has no heartbeat. Oh, I thought you
just meant he was like heartless individual. I thought you were. Well, no, no,
I'm not riffing. This is true, but but I'm also
implying certain certain ways. There are levels to this statement. Yeah,
well I want one of those. I think Cheney charming personally.
(04:41):
That's true. You usually say that as soon as I'm smiling.
I'm doing it just just just for the folks listening.
I am doing a big Cheshire Cat grin here. Sometimes
I say things like I mean them, and then I'm
smiling or making a face that these guys and you
guys don't see that, so you may. I have quite
an odd variety of opinions out there in podcast LAMB,
(05:04):
but just to set the record straight. You know, Noel
Brown is a huge Dick Cheney fan. So by the
strictest definition and by in biology biologically speaking, outside the
world of music, an organ is just a group of
tissues in a living organism that have been adapted to
(05:27):
perform a specific function. Sounds simple. That, yeah, sounds pretty simple.
You have a heart, and your heart has like one
main job, right sure, same with your liver, your kidneys,
your eyes, all of the parts. I think there are
seventy eight official organs. Well by that by it depends
again on the definition and be around seventy eight. People
(05:49):
will argue back and forth what does or does not
constitute an organ entire. What I find meat though, is
that these organs are divided into two very distinct category
is um all the ones we mentioned are considered vital organs,
which are organs that are absolutely essential for maintaining your
health and you know, your life ultimately. Um. These are
(06:10):
the kinds of things like your heart, your brain, your kidneys,
your liver, things that perform processes that you need done
in order to live in the environment that we Yeah,
I think the besides the eyes I mentioned the eyes,
that's true, but I don't know, would you consider I
as part of this second category vestigial organs, which is yeah, well,
(06:31):
I mean I don't know, I don't know. I think
you would probably get arguments for that. I suppose you
could say, maybe we could live in a society where
we have evolved beyond the need of our eyes, but
you'd certainly put you at a disadvantage. And right now,
society has evolved to make something like blindness or deafness, uh,
not a death sentence. But if people were simply animals
(06:54):
in a wild unter gatherer type scenario like you might
be sunk, would be it would it would be more
different gold for sure, And that's that's one of the
that's one of the great benefits of the human, the
whole human experiment. Right, But well, let's talk about these
other organs, at least vestigil right, vestigial organs, this would
be something that is a rudimentary structure in us that
(07:18):
corresponds to a functional structure in another animal. Right, sometimes
described as the lower animals, which I think is hugely
condescending and unfair. But we have all kinds of examples
of this, right, What about things like tonsils? Are like
an appendix. Yeah, wisdom teeth or maybe a tail. Yes,
(07:40):
people are born sometimes to the tail, perhaps male nipples.
Oh man, I'm so tired of like. It used to
really bother me. It's like, why are these here? Is
there no purpose? You guys aren't using them right, I
mean not like right now. No, I'm just saying you're
not using them correctly. Oh, I see, we're a family show.
(08:06):
Did you guys see I just really fast? Did you
see the article about the Atlanta Native couple? Uh? Josh
and Chuck posted this quick thing of a woman who
left her job to find a male partner, oh, to
to breast feat feed at like adults. And this is
apparently a huge thing. Is it like a like a
(08:27):
fetishy thing? I think it is. Yeah, But he doesn't
have some sort of strange disorder that makes him some
sort of breast milk vampire. Does she like have to
burp him and stuff? I don't know, but but I
did some looking into this story, and it appears that
there's a whole counterculture of people who do this, who
(08:48):
believe that there are massive health benefits for both parts. Yeah,
there are people who say that their health benefits. Yet
and perhaps that is an episode for another day. And
perhaps perhaps you are right, and hey, it's tough to
be happy, so I wish them the best of luck.
It sounds like it's consensual returning to organs. So we've
got these things, we need many of them. There's some
(09:11):
that we don't particularly need need to live, right, You
can go without a kidney both, you could go without
wisdom teeth. What do you do when the important ones fail?
The ones that are not like add on packages to
the car that is your body, but the stuff that's
(09:32):
like the engine and the transmission. Well, for thousands and
thousands and thousands of years, when people's organs failed, they died. Yep.
That was it, sometimes quickly, sometimes and prolonged, excruciatingly painful
ways the human body. To bring it to our current
capitalist society, the human body was a product with planned obsolescence,
(09:55):
no warranties and no returns, no exchanges either. And that's
not to say that over the years, throughout history, medical
science hasn't been attempting to replace these things in dying
humans when their their heart is giving out, or their
liver is dying or something like that. We've attempted humans
(10:16):
many times to try and replace these things. Yeah, not
you knowlan me, but fellow members of our species have
been experimenting with oregan transplants since at least the seventeenth century,
and animals and in humans, and along the way there
were many, many, many gruesome, horrific and tragic failures. A
(10:44):
lot of them we don't even know about because they
were never written down, right, but we do have early examples. Yeah,
like in sixteen sixty, um, a bone graft was attempted
using a dog's skull and actually successfully attached this graph
to a humans head. Yeah, yeah, we see the animal transplants,
(11:08):
the practice of putting animal components into a human body,
where um, we're not unheard of. I mean at the time,
it probably seemed like a logical jump to make, you know,
why not, let's just give it a shot. And that
could have also been at the what if stage. Yeah sure,
(11:28):
especially if you're getting desperate trying to save somebody, I mean,
and if someone is on their last legs, you try anything,
and in that desperation. In nineteen o five, uh, there
were some doctors who took slices of a rabbit kidney.
They put it into a child and it did seem
to improve kidney function at least for a little while. Unfortunately,
(11:49):
the child did die shortly after that from all from
pulmonary congestion. Right. And then in the same year nineteen
o five, doctors manage to transplant a cornea into the
damaged die of a laborer restoring his site. That's that,
to me is crazy to think about in nine o five,
(12:10):
like any kind of eye surgery back then, that's like
buying a lottery tickets every day for a week and winning. Yeah.
Then in nineteen and six we have a French surgeon,
Matteo Jubile, who attempted to save two patients lives they
were suffering from renal failure by transplanting goat kidney into
(12:31):
one of the patients and a pig kidney into the other,
and they died shortly there after work. And I think
what the big takeaway is from a lot of these
early examples is that these organs are incredibly specific. They
and this just goes into the whole idea of being
on a transplant list or like getting you have to
get just the right one, has to match your blood type,
(12:51):
has to There are a lot of factors involved that
you know, will make this work, otherwise your body will
literally reject this organ right in this There were other
attempts through the thirties and on and on and with
each of these, uh, with each of these failures that
were hard lessons learned, and it looked like it maybe
(13:14):
it might be something that was just going to be
beyond the bounds of reliable medical technology and science at
least that is until the first successful oregan transplant in
December of nineteen fifty four. Yeah, it was this guy
named Ronald Herrick. He was the first one. He had
a successful transplant procedure. Pretty awesome, Um, it was. It's
(13:36):
a cool story to actually and and there's a house
Stuff Works article on organ donation where you can find
this story. Um. He he had a twin brother named Richard,
and one of his you know, his kidneys were failing,
and his brother basically decided, well, what if I give
one of my kidneys? And the doctor saw this was
(13:58):
really interesting because it hadn't been successful in the past,
but because their genetics were so close almost identical, uh,
they thought perhaps it would work. So the doctors didn't
have much faith that this would actually be carried out,
even though, you know, they have faith in themselves and
being able to make the procedure happen. They don't think
(14:18):
it will. The organ itself will take. The great thing
is that it did work. Both of them survives, and
they went on to live happily ever after. Right or
did they? Yeah? I mean that part. We're kidding on
that part. No one does that. But they did. Okay, yeah,
they did great. They both recovered at least downer you are, sir, Uh, Yeah,
(14:45):
I guess I'm more what's a what's a word for downer?
And that starts with a B? So we can do
it like a m benjie bad attitude. That's pretty good. No,
that's terrible. Well that's why you're You're right. You're absolutely right,
(15:05):
and there's no reason to be down, is there? Because
this worked very well and after this watershed moment, more
and more successful transplants took place. So today, at least
in the US and really globally, if you are someone
with enough money and enough luck and enough opportunity, you
really can get a second chance at life with a
(15:29):
new organ. We cannot emphasize how amazing this is and
how technology is still since I'm gonna try to be
positive for their podcast. I appreciate it. You know, uh,
we still know that this medical technology continues to evolve
at a breakneck pace, you know, doing amazing things. If
(15:50):
a child, for a child born today the day you're
hearing this, by the time they are eighteen, and is
quite possible that they will be able to buy uh
grown organs grown in a lap, not taken from another person,
or to take possibly organs from genetically modified animals or
(16:13):
entirely entirely synthetic things. However, we're not there yet at
this point. Your best the best and only way that
you can get another organ is by getting it from
another person. Many people volunteer to donate their own organs,
(16:34):
like the twin we mentioned earlier, either a kidney or
you know, you can live with one kidney like you said, no,
you can chop a liver almost in half and yeah,
and will regenerate almost as full size. Or if you
are a person with the driver's license in the US,
you are incentivized to be an organ donor because you
(16:57):
get a little discount. And what they do is they
just say, well, if the worst thing happens, the worst
thing for you, at least then something great might happen
for some other people, which is a pretty terrifying thought.
But at the same time, you know, if you're dead,
depending on your religious and spiritual beliefs, then hey, who cares,
(17:20):
somebody else can use it. You can't take him with you,
you know. And arguably you could say this is a
form of extending someone's life if you are if a
piece of you lives on in someone else. Absolutely, the
pharaohs of Egypt would probably disagree though. I mean, they
had all of their organs pulled out and put into
jars and preserved in their tombs, you know, so that
(17:43):
they could have them in the after life, and that
was part of the that was part of the belief
system at the time, you know. And there there's still
some there's still some religions and belief systems that do
not allow for Oregon donation, like the Roma don't practice
it because they believe you need your physical body and
all its components for at least the first year, because
(18:06):
you have to retrace your steps. And now we know
not Now we know that this this stuff does work.
It gives the average person a chance to be a
hero and should be quite candid. This is a situation
where people need heroes. Between two thousand and eight, there
(18:28):
were more than thousand living donations. It's donations from somebody
who gave theory will survive after UH. In two thousand
and six, nearly forty six percent of organ donors were
living donors, So that accounts for about twenty one point
six percent of all organs donated. So like Matt's Matt,
(18:50):
you said, you can donate part of your liver and live,
and donate part of a lung, part of your pancreas.
You can donate a whole kidney or a part of
your intestines. You do have to be in pretty darn
good health to make a donation like this. Oh, I mean,
it is true that there are only a few prohibitive
factors that could stop you certain diseases, being HIV positive
(19:12):
or something like that. Um, but you know, still, I
don't think anyone would want my liver. Probably, Ben, do
we have a stat about how often direct family members
are the ones that are doing this donation, because that
would just seems to me that would sure save a
lot of this this process to write these lists and
the waiting list of search for compatibility, Well, we don't
(19:34):
have that exactly, but we do know according to the
American Transplant Foundation that of about five thousand living donations
that occur that they watched, only one in four of
the donors was not biologically related to the recipient, at
least from their perspective. Interesting, it's not. It's not legal
(19:57):
to buy or sell organs here in the US for transplant,
but it is legal to buy and sell them for
research purposes. So as long as you say, well, sorry,
uncle Sam, this is not for me. I am doing
a science project. And we've got a couple more stats
(20:18):
if you want. According to the Department of Health and
Human Services, more than two thousand new names are added
to the national waiting list for oregan transplants. And to
get that's every month and every day, the day you
are listening to this podcast, Ladies and gentlemen, in the
(20:39):
US alone, about eighteen people die while waiting for an
oregan transplant. So these people, these voluntary donors, living or dead,
are doing terrific, wonderful, and much needed work, and we
need more. But here's the thing, not all of these
(21:00):
donors are volunteers. As it turns out, quite a few
of them are victims, and we'll get more into that
after we take a quick break. So, as you can
(21:21):
tell from the statistics we covered earlier everything that we've
talked about thus far, the need for organs far outweighs
the supply for organs. And what happens then there is
a basically a gulf that needs to be filled. And
as we know, when there's money to be made, people
(21:41):
are gonna come along and fill that golf. Yeah, when's
when supply demand don't meet, there's gonna be profit. And uh,
that's what we see, and the question becomes existential. You
know what I mean? This is this is not well,
I steal a Selca or an a Lantra from someone
because I want a Selca or a Lancha, or God
(22:03):
forbid a Honda Odyssey, which is not worth it. Uh,
this is a question of survival. If you are sitting
next to someone listening to this, and you're close to
that person, look at each other. What would you do
to keep them alive? Would you donate your kidney? If
given the opportunity, would you find them a heart? The
(22:26):
average heart will beat approximately two point five billion times
in the course of an average person's life, So now
you need to start thinking about the age of this
heart you would procure, because honestly, you'll get more mileage
the younger that transplant source is. Well, it's true. Unfortunately,
(22:49):
it's true, and let's be honest. This is just my
personal opinion here. Some of the results of this come
about because the American medical system is a joke without
a punchline. People are dying due to UM due to
a phenomenally byzantine system of jacked up prices for operations
(23:13):
and medicines that would be affordable in many other countries.
This is again, that is just my opinion, but they're
there are numerous facts that point to UM that that
point to a very poor performance on the part of
the US medical system in comparison to the rest of
the developed world. I mean, if we are considering the
(23:34):
entire population, we're only considering the people who can pay
the price tag, then the US medical system is the
best in the world. Look at the examples. You see
if people that you know are in the hospital for
three or four days and then their insurance gets cut
off or like you know, the it's maxes out and
they're left with like a ten thousand dollar bill, for
being in the hospital for a few days just so
they can breathe, or of course, right and then be
(23:59):
in debt for the rest of their lives or bankrupts. Right,
So this I mean, and that maybe is a sub
I know, it's a touch of one for a lot
of people. So that will perhaps be a subject of
a future show. I don't know what you guys think.
And of course we can anticipate the arguments people say, well,
medical care is not free. That is true, and that's
something we can explore in a future episode. Right now,
(24:22):
In the case of kidneys, which are by far one
of the most common organs transplanted donated harvested traffic, only
seventeen percent of the annual demand is being met, and
due to again skyrocketing medical cost the vast majority of
US citizens have virtually no way of affording a living donor.
(24:45):
So make no mistake, legal organ transplants, like many other operations,
are overwhelmingly out of the reach of a lot of people.
Not to mention, maybe you're just so far down the list.
It's just the this is not on your side. People
will do desperate things in times of this kind of stress. Yeah,
(25:06):
that's a really good point, because even if we're talking
about people who have enough capital or income to to
have the best medical care in the world, right and
maybe survive as long as they can on the list,
then there's some things you know, you just can't legally buy.
So imagine, imagine, Matt, that you are a multimillionaire but dope,
(25:31):
but you can't you can't afford this legal avenue, and
that leaves you with two options. Yeah, I guess I
would die or I would find a way to get one.
Guess which one people tend to choose. I'm guessing they
just take kidneys. According to the u N, there are
(25:54):
three broad categories of organ trafficking. Number one our cases
involving track lookers that force or actually deceive victims into
giving up an organ. Example might be persons kidnapped, their
organ is harvested, or or the this this is the
one that everyone knows from movies. Right. You meet a
(26:15):
charming stranger, a great cool guy or girl, or group
of people, and you party a little harder than you intended,
and the next thing you know, yeah, you wake up
in a tub of ice in the hotel and there's
some staples on your side. That's shilling Um. Well, I
(26:36):
talked to you guys about this before the show, the
movie Sympathy from Mr. Vengeance. I think this is a
it's a really really dark movie. It's beautifully made them
but for kids. But it involves this very thing Um,
and it points to some of the conditions that might
lead someone to enter into an even an agreement with
these type of folks. Where one of the main characters
(26:58):
has a sister who needs I believe it's a kidney,
and she's on this waiting list but it's not working
out and it's taking too long and she's not doing well.
So the main character UM finds these gangsters and agrees
with them, like, Okay, I'm gonna you're gonna take out
my kidney and we're going to do the operation. Instead,
(27:18):
they knocked him out, take his kidney and his money,
and disappear, right. And this this is common enough to
be a trope in a lot of fiction as far
as how often it actually happens that way in real life,
it's it's tough to fresh proof. But that's not the
only case. You said. There are three categories, right, So
the second category involves cases where victims formally or informally
(27:42):
agree to sell an organ and then are cheated out
of money. So the thing for the film is almost
a combination of the two. Are then cheated out of
the money or paid less than promised and threatened, um,
you know totally, you'll take what we give you exactly.
You're lucky to leave with your life. I mean, that's
the thing. These are um opportunistic, manipulative folks that are
(28:03):
that are doing these things. They are finding people in
their time of need, their time of most desperation, and
you know, turning the screws on the criminals. Yeah. Well,
and sometimes it even does happen voluntarily where someone will
fly to Turkey or something to give their their kidney
(28:23):
four or five thousand dollars, you know, four ten thousand
dollars US. Meanwhile, the person who is taking the kidney
is going to make ten times that, twenty times that. Yeah,
And as as as problematic as Ben said, as as
are medical system is at least you do have some
assurances and you know everything's documented and you know, nothing
like that would ever happen, and hopefully your chances of
(28:46):
survival are much higher because it's cleaner and they're they're
better standards for care. But there's there's another thing that
to see here. We I don't want to jump ahead
too far other than to say there is a vast
criminal element to this. And this is something that happens.
Whenever something is illegal and people are going to do,
(29:09):
there will be, as you said, no opportunistic people involved.
Imagine having a gambling debt. You're in over your head,
you have no hope of paying this off within the
time allotted to you. And then well, no, let's say
I have a gambling debt to you. Let's say, what's
a massive amount of money to oh for gambling? One
(29:30):
million dollars? Okay, So I had a wild night in Macau,
and now I owe you, the uh, the shadowy leader
of the underworld, one million dollars. And you told me
I have forty eight hours, our forty seven. And I'm dragged,
you know, in into whatever palatial place you have, uh
(29:53):
And and then you make it very clear that you're
you're fine with killing me, but but you give me
a chance. You tell me I can give up you know,
my kidney or part of my lunger, my liver. And
of course people are going to say yes to something
like that it's horrific, but they will. And then there's
(30:14):
the third case, which to me is one of the saddest.
I have to say, guys, in this example, it would
be it would make a lot more sense if it
was maybe a hundred thousand dollars, because they would make
that if you own a million dollars, Yeah, they would
just kill me and take and harvest because they could.
They could pretty much make that from your entire body.
I would go to the chop shop. Yikes, don't do it. No,
(30:39):
don't do it. I mean I've never started gambling. I've
never gambled, and I don't intend to start now because
I am frightened by this scenario. No, it's true. I
mean even you know I I've played some slots here
and there, but I don't think I could ever know that.
I thought you were about to say, No, it's true.
I guess I would have to do that. Well, you know,
(31:00):
when faced with that situation and I have to take
care of my investment. Oh yeah, ice cold, I respect
you though. Number three, this is perhaps one of the saddests. Yes.
The third example is when a vulnerable person receives treatment
for some ailment. Perhaps it's real. Perhaps it's not only
(31:21):
to find when they come out of surgery or whatever
procedure they went through, they find that one or more
of their organs have been removed during the operation, and
it ranges from what organs are taken in this procedure um.
And this is one of the more terrifying. I mean,
these are all terrifying, but this one to me. Trusting
(31:43):
someone going into a surgery or something like that only
to find that something completely different has happened. Yikes. We're
talking about completely disenfranchised people that have no recourse, migrant workers,
homeless people, the impoverished, the illiterate. They are just easy
targets for these folks who want to prey on the
fact that they have no one to protect them. And
(32:05):
they can be any age, they can be any you know,
create race, ethnicity, whatever sort of label you want to
attach to an example of the human species, as long
as they got the goods and by that I mean kidneys, livers,
any of these organs that are you know, ultimately pretty
easy to remove in a bench, which is horrifying in
(32:25):
and of itself, especially when you consider that you know,
these are not done in sanitary conditions. These are not
done in clean rooms, you know, well yeah, and the
fact that they could be removed and then you can
still live depending on how you were treated after and
what type of process they took to actually remove it
and then fix you up, which is that to me
(32:48):
is awful. Can imagine living after that just happening to
you the PTSD that you would experience in your life.
I personally would be thrilled to be alive, sure, because
think of the time and money you save if you're
working with volume on sutures, on cleaning up. You know,
(33:11):
are you saying I mean, I'm trying to just figure
out why it's in their best interest to leave these
people alive in the first place. I think that a
lot of it is because it is a transaction, you know.
So if it's a transaction, then it's ultimately a business
and if the business model is uh, you know, if
(33:34):
you established consistency, people will only come back to you
or only go pay you if they know they're going
to live. So if we're around the street turns out
that you just kill people and take their organs, which
we do have cases of that, then people aren't going
to go to you with their gambling debts or their
um blood money of one sort or another. And and okay,
(33:58):
so we said earlier that sidneys make up of this
illegal organ trade, But do you know why it's It's
not just because you can take one and sell, although
I think that's a huge part of it. It's also
because of the rising rates of diabetes, high blood pressure,
heart problems and such in across the globe. So you
(34:21):
need those the filtration system that are the kidneys which
are failing across the board. And for everyone who might
think this is this is a strange thing for us
to cover, we would argue that this is an example
of not one, but multiple international conspiracies, not theories. And again,
a conspiracy just means people working together in secret toward
(34:44):
a common goal. Organized crime necessitates conspiracies. This involves recruiters,
people who transport the patient, underground, medical staff, middleman contractors, buyers,
and banks that store the organs because remember, organs don't
keep And a lot of people throughout the history of
(35:05):
oregan transplants have died because an oregan was pulled from
a cadaver that have been dead for hours. You know.
So this stuff is on ice and and on the
good side. On the legal side, there's this amazing logistics
chain of how to of how people move an organ
(35:26):
and keep it stored on ice across the country or
across the ocean to save someone's life. And this can
be a good thing. It can be a good thing
for the for the law side. The problem is because
these networks are so large, when they get exposed, it
will a lot of times be one arm or one
(35:47):
one section of a network, and you never really get
to see the larger picture because you know, when you're
operating underground like this, you just pick up shop and
get out of there if there isn't a good paper trail. Right, Yeah,
So let's talk about some facts about organ trafficking. So
(36:09):
I'll start with one. Organ trafficking accounts for five to
ten percent of all kidney transplants worldwide. Mind blowing to me.
That's like saying, uh, a llegal car sales account for
ten percent of all cars purchased in you know, in
the U s Or he just wouldn't ever associate that.
(36:29):
I don't know. And according to the w h OH,
the World Health Organization, the illegal trade and kidneys has
risen to a level that an estimated ten thousand. Black
market operations involving purchased human organs now take place every year,
and according to a couple of organizations organ Failure Solutions,
(36:50):
Organs Watch and e s O T, the typical organ
donor as a male about twenty eight point nine, let's
say twenty nine years old, with an annual income of
four hundred and eighty dollars, while the typical recipient is
a male of about forty eight point one years old
with an annual income of fifty three thousand dollars. So
(37:13):
the discrepancy there between the donor and the recipient is
pretty telling. And organs aren't just used for transplants. There's
a demand for illicit experimentation from unethical scientists. Think of
these as the modern version of resurrection men robber threat
(37:35):
resurrection men were grave robbers, especially in during a time
when it was legal to experiment on cadavers for med
schools and stuff, but it was illegal to procure the bodies.
So that's a chilling but not entirely inaccurate comparison. And
(37:57):
then of course there are there are other body parts
such as bones or genitalia that are used for uh
magical rituals and the profit margins here can be outrageous.
In July of two thousand nine, Levy Itsac Rosenbaum was
arrested in Brooklyn for conspiring to arrange the sale of
(38:18):
an Israeli citizens kidney to an undercover FBI agent for
a hundred and sixty thousand dollars. He said he'd been
selling kidneys for ten years underground. He paid ten thousand
for a kidney and sold it for a hundred and
sixty thousand. And there are an unsettling number of examples
of at least parts of networks that have been exposed to.
Al Jazeera really recently put out a story, i think
(38:42):
in the February about a small syndicate in Indonesia in
this place called Java, West Java, where this really small
village that had a population of thirty people uh a
large number of them sold their kidneys or for around
five thousand dollars each um, and it was being run
(39:03):
out of a state hospital. It really crazy stuff like that,
just some bad people who are working with a couple
other bad people inside a state run organization. A story
from the Guardian in two thousand nine discussed how some
some pathologists in Israel were harvesting organs from Palestinians and
several others thousand the ninety nineties. It has ended officially
(39:27):
at least, which is nice. And if you search for
this kind of the stuff, just just put Oregon Harvesting
Network into you know, Google, and then click on the
news column and just go back, and it's prevalent. There's
a lot of it. And in neither of the cases
that met just mentioned, neither in Indonesia nor in Israel
(39:48):
were these state sanctioned things. These were underground cabals operating
and then they were eventually exposed. And that's almost always
how it is, except in the People's Republic of China
and the People's Republic of China, you can see numerous
accusations that say the government itself is harvesting organs from
(40:14):
executive prisoners, or, as claimed in a PBS documentary from
two thousand fifteen, that the government is actually collecting organs
from live prisoners or practitioners of a spiritual group uh
of a spiritual belief system called Falling Gong. The idea
(40:35):
here is that China is arbitrarily imprisoning this minority religious
group and then torturing them, killing them selling their organs,
getting rich off what's called transplant tourism. Yep. And and
again you can find it in the US, you can
find it in Brazil and South Africa. It's this practice
is occurring all over the globe. So you guys, why
(40:59):
is the still going on? Why is this still so prevalent.
I would say there's several reasons. One of the big
ones would be, uh, demand, And if we're saying demand,
what we need to look at will be the precipitous
rise of health conditions in the you know what, in
(41:20):
the world entire because there's this big stereotype of terribly
unhealthy Americans, right Uh, that stereotype has some truth in it.
One in nine or twenty six million Americans have kidney
disease and most probably don't know it. But obesity and
diabetes and related things are on the rise in the
(41:42):
developing world as well, So there are more people with
worse parts. And I think as long as that situation continues,
until we can grow stuff in a vat, until we
can all live a more healthy lifestyle. And I have
not volunteering, by the way, because I'm setting my ways
(42:03):
and they are terrible. Until we can iron man or
chainey up some some suitable technological or mechanical replacement. The problem,
the problem with this stuff been is that it's still
going to favor those that are wealthy because it will
cost money. It's a service either. You know, it's not
(42:25):
easy to remove an organ and put it back in
for sure. And as we start to develop, you know,
more high tech ways of doing this, whether it's lab
grown or what have you, it's gonna be like these
hypothetical situations with life extension technology. Who is that going
to be for? It's going to be for the upper class,
which is the class that is basically in control. That's
(42:49):
a harrowing point because on the surface, the legal organ trade,
at least if you if you look at the rules
of the guidelines for the list, they say that this
a person's placement on the list is evaluated by factors
that are entirely biologically related severity of illness, time spent waiting,
(43:10):
blood type, match potential, and UH. At least according to
American Transplant Foundation, income, race, and social status are never
taken into account in the allocation process, which sounds like
a beautiful thing until you take into account means to
(43:31):
move yourself up on that list that aren't necessarily proven,
but you know, colluding with someone who controls the list,
or staying or or you know, the means to participate
in this illegal market which is making hundreds of million,
hundreds of millions of dollars minimum, probably more than an
(43:53):
estimated billion. And also also it's tough to find these
sorts of rings and wipe them out entirely. You know,
people's survival instinct is good. The money it's just so profitable, right,
(44:15):
and these are people often operating across international boundaries. So
at this point, at that at this point, regardless of
the various solutions to the various causes for this sort
of situation, it just that it doesn't seem to be
(44:36):
going away. This is really tough because in a lot
of the black markets that we've looked at in the past,
it seems as though the legalization of whatever product that
is being sold can kind of solve that black market
because it then becomes a free market thing, right, But
with this situation, you can't really legalize just the voluntary
(44:59):
donation and receiving of organs from other humans at least
I can't foresee away. Well, they just a lot is
left up to chance. When you go the legal route,
and it almost seems like the illegal route, you might
be more likely to at least have the perception that
you're going to get what you need, you know, with
about having to jump through as many hoops or weight
(45:20):
as long, and you know, have less uncertainty, and you
could even hypothetically higher an entire network, so you could
get the level of care that you would expect from
a you know, from a top notch hospital if you
just by a doctor and her his services for this
(45:44):
one thing, if you just contracted out, it would cost
an enormous amount of money. But if a new kidney
gives you another nine years of life, a lot of
people would see that as a as a fair trade,
you know. And I'm sure that a lot of the
people who are participating in this illegal organ trafficking are
(46:04):
also doing it without of desperation and are not monstrous people,
you know, they they are. Possibly maybe it's more like
a matchmaking thing where they meet someone who wants money,
and they have the money, and they say, okay, here,
let's make a deal. Maybe it is. It may well
(46:26):
be consensual many times, but also many times it is not. Yeah,
because we also we've seen that this matches up with
the act of human trafficking as well, right, I mean
where people will be treated like cattle and taken to
another place where this will happen to them. It's been
reported on a lot by the u N how closely
(46:48):
linked human trafficking and organ trafficking is. So you know,
it's it's weird how far ranging this this process or
how how much it encompasses. It's also one of these
kind of devil's bargain scenarios where you don't really know
the cost, the actual cost of what you're buying. You know,
(47:08):
you're you're paying money, and maybe you you can afford it.
And maybe you are a wealthy person that has decided
to go this route because of the hoops required to
get on a legal list to get you know, what
you need when you need it. So maybe you decided
to go this route because you feel like you can
make it happen quicker for yourself or a loved one.
But you don't know who was manipulated, who was taking
(47:32):
advantage of to get that for you, So you are
becoming part of this problem by you know, feeding it. Yeah,
absolutely agree this, Okay, let's end on an up note,
if we can. I know this has been a you know,
I took that Debbi Downer advice to heart, so I'm
trying to see some silver linings. There is a huge
(47:56):
financial incentive now for medical technology US and for inventors
to create and geneticist as well, to create some sort
of viable alternative, because even if the illegal organ trafficking
networks expand and expand even more so in size, we're
(48:19):
at a point where taking things from one human and
putting them in another is probably not enough. So what
we're going to need to do as a species is
to create a viable alternative, and people are working around
the clock to do so. So this situation may become
eventually a thing of the past. You know, eventually, hopefully
(48:43):
your children and your grandchildren will hear about this age
in medicine and treat it with the same incredulity that
we used to treat stories of a world before germ theory.
They used to take organs out of one person and
put it in another person, and they used to use
hands to type what Why don't you just think it
(49:07):
into your Google? I think it is weird to think
how long this conversation will last digitally. If the Internet
stays around for long enough, people people might actually listen
to a go it's too scary. But yeah, we hope
that you. We hope that you found this episode worthwhile.
Do you have uh, do you have any thoughts on
(49:30):
organ transplants ethically, physically, biologically? Have you ever had an
organ transplant or maybe donated one of your own? You
you want to write to us and tell us about it,
We would love to hear. Ye. Have you ever made
it to the end of the organ trail without dying
of Dysenterry? I did once, but well I did several times.
(49:51):
I played on easy mode and I still lost some people.
You monster. One guy broke a leg, uh and then
died of dysentery. Man, it was rough. This is Harry.
I think it's like the base level, and then there's
other stuff that's like we really had to bring it
back there all I think we should. I really just
(50:11):
trying to lighten things up a little bit. Guys. This
has got pretty got pretty pretty dark here, you know.
I want to play it again and then name members
of our party, like after after you guys and some
of our listeners. But I'm afraid of you know, what
am I gonna do if one of you guys doesn't
make it over the river. You know we're speaking of parties.
Let's have a shout out corner party shut at corners.
(50:35):
Our first shout out goes to Dakota who works at
the postal service and listens to our show all delivering mail.
That's kind of cool. Dakota. Let us know that watch
Mojo often uses our videos as uh kind of source
material for their own YouTube channel, which is kind of
what we do with other YouTube channels as well. We'll
(50:56):
use references and but we did some checking and that
they do give us on screen credit with texts, so
we're totally cool with that. And the last thing, he
Dakota wanted us to say hello to long John and
I don't know who that is, but it's it's Dakota's
friend the watch Moja. They also I think they did
a list awhile back where they had different conspiracy type
(51:19):
chose and yeah, YouTube conspiracy theories lists. So Ben Boland
was and Matt and Matt Frederick we were both on
that list. We were guys, we're all on the list.
And next we have Matt s on Twitter, Matt you said,
have you considered doing an episode on the theory that
we are living in a simulation? Matt you also sent
(51:41):
Matt S. You also sent video of la Musk discussing
this topic, which you, Matt f I am sure enjoyed immensely.
I did. Yeah, I think I shared it with you guys.
Maybe I didn't, Maybe we just talked about it. It's
the one where Elon Musk is asked a question about
simulated universe theory, and he basically says we have a
one in one billion chance of existing in base reality, which,
(52:06):
if you dig into it a little bit, it's a
little off. His numbers are a little off, but it's
still fascinating to think that one of the richest humans
on the planet believes that. Next one, we have one
via Facebook from Corey C. Thanks for keeping me hip
to all the neat, strange and weird things you guys cover.
Then we have a little hashtag party here. Hashtagsad douche,
hashtag all hail our, age less Overlord Ben, hashtag bag
(52:29):
of Badgers, hashtag the only medal is created with filth.
Hashtag give him at his boat back hashtag tell Frank
I said Hi. Yeah, is this someone that knows Frank? Yeah?
You talked about Frank a couple of times. Um, I
think you even mentioned that you should say hi. Have
you ever seen Frank? See Frank, say hi to him.
He's a great guy. I'm just wondering if this is
someone that knows Frank, Like in the real world, Frank
(52:49):
does get around. Uh. Maybe there are many Francs, the
many faces of Frank, the many faces of Frank. And
this thus ends our shout out corner for today's declash.
But never fear. If you would like a shout out
from us, we do. We do two or three each episode.
(53:10):
If you have something you want to say to all
the other listeners of the show, then hit us up
on Twitter and Facebook where we are Conspiracy Stuff. And
if you don't like the social media stuff, go ahead
and send us an email. It's really easy. We are
Conspiracy and how Stuff Works dot com.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
(00:20):
name is Noel. They called me Ben and you are you,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Today's podcast comes oddly enough, from a a pretty tasteless
joke that we made a while back, and I don't
remember if it made it to the air, did it
it did? Yeah, we were joking about the Oregon Trail
(00:41):
because someone suggested we we cover the topic of illegal
organ trafficking, which is a great suggestion. And then we
all died of dysentery. And then we all died of
dysentery in the middle of spoiler alert. Yeah, yeah, because
we were dumb enough to start the game as farmers. Uh.
Then never do that way harder. But yeah, we were
(01:03):
kicking around, just terrible titles. Uh, and one of those was,
of course the organ Trail. Well if you say it
like that, yeah you can go either way. Well title aside,
this is I don't apologize for that title. I didn't
I just said title aside. Uh okay, so uh we
(01:27):
think this is a complex, global and continual phenomenon and
it is worth exploring in depth because, aside from some
maybe scare pieces that pop up at a slow day
in the news cycle, this is not really examined and
the causes of it aren't examined as well. There is
(01:49):
a lot of stuff they don't want you to know
about organ transplants, the organ trade in general, what has
been called the red market. So I at first I
wanted to ask you guys, uh, Matt nol, those are
real names, sorry for everyone? Should we apologize for that one?
(02:09):
I don't know what you're talking about. That's a good point.
So have have you, guys ever known or been acquainted
with someone who received an organ transplant? I could not
come up with a good example when I was going
back through my life. Um, if you count bone marrow,
which I think you should, yeah, then yes. I know.
(02:30):
It's an intense process as far as like getting on
a list, getting matched with the right candidate, and then
actually getting the procedure done and having everything booked because
it is a very timely process, you know, once everything
goes through, uh, And there's a lot of uncertainty, and
you even hear stories about people trying to get higher
up on the list by you know, greasing some poems
(02:52):
here and there, you know. I mean there's a lot
of steak obviously, and I won't say who this person was,
just to you know, maintain their their privacy, but yeah,
it was it was very nerve nerve wracking, just wondering
when it was gonna happen, when it was going to
go through, and when it did go through, if everything
was gonna work out correctly. Yeah, because even with everything
(03:15):
going as well as possible, there's still a there's still
a significant risk. And it's not like if that one
doesn't work out, they're just gonna give you another one.
I mean, that's the one that you get, and then
if it doesn't look out, if you make it, and
you have to start the whole process over. So that
is a terrifying prospect. Let's let's talk about organs first, because,
(03:37):
as you know, this podcast is part of how stuff works,
so we want to start at the most basic thing. Organs.
They're one of the few things that everybody has in common.
Everyone who is involved with this show, we all have organs. Yes,
everyone listening to this show hopefully has organs. Maybe there's
(03:58):
some sort of machine consciousness listening there, and that gets
into a conversation about what would constitute and an organ. Yeah,
maybe Dick Cheney is listening with his robotic heart that
just constantly circulates blood instead of pumping. That's a pacemaker.
That's not, isn't it. It's not. He doesn't have a
pacemaker anymore now, it's just a constant flow of blood.
(04:20):
There's no he has no heartbeat. Oh, I thought you
just meant he was like heartless individual. I thought you were. Well, no, no,
I'm not riffing. This is true, but but I'm also
implying certain certain ways. There are levels to this statement. Yeah,
well I want one of those. I think Cheney charming personally.
(04:41):
That's true. You usually say that as soon as I'm smiling.
I'm doing it just just just for the folks listening.
I am doing a big Cheshire Cat grin here. Sometimes
I say things like I mean them, and then I'm
smiling or making a face that these guys and you
guys don't see that, so you may. I have quite
an odd variety of opinions out there in podcast LAMB,
(05:04):
but just to set the record straight. You know, Noel
Brown is a huge Dick Cheney fan. So by the
strictest definition and by in biology biologically speaking, outside the
world of music, an organ is just a group of
tissues in a living organism that have been adapted to
(05:27):
perform a specific function. Sounds simple. That, yeah, sounds pretty simple.
You have a heart, and your heart has like one
main job, right sure, same with your liver, your kidneys,
your eyes, all of the parts. I think there are
seventy eight official organs. Well by that by it depends
again on the definition and be around seventy eight. People
(05:49):
will argue back and forth what does or does not
constitute an organ entire. What I find meat though, is
that these organs are divided into two very distinct category
is um all the ones we mentioned are considered vital organs,
which are organs that are absolutely essential for maintaining your
health and you know, your life ultimately. Um. These are
(06:10):
the kinds of things like your heart, your brain, your kidneys,
your liver, things that perform processes that you need done
in order to live in the environment that we Yeah,
I think the besides the eyes I mentioned the eyes,
that's true, but I don't know, would you consider I
as part of this second category vestigial organs, which is yeah, well,
(06:31):
I mean I don't know, I don't know. I think
you would probably get arguments for that. I suppose you
could say, maybe we could live in a society where
we have evolved beyond the need of our eyes, but
you'd certainly put you at a disadvantage. And right now,
society has evolved to make something like blindness or deafness, uh,
not a death sentence. But if people were simply animals
(06:54):
in a wild unter gatherer type scenario like you might
be sunk, would be it would it would be more
different gold for sure, And that's that's one of the
that's one of the great benefits of the human, the
whole human experiment. Right, But well, let's talk about these
other organs, at least vestigil right, vestigial organs, this would
be something that is a rudimentary structure in us that
(07:18):
corresponds to a functional structure in another animal. Right, sometimes
described as the lower animals, which I think is hugely
condescending and unfair. But we have all kinds of examples
of this, right, What about things like tonsils? Are like
an appendix. Yeah, wisdom teeth or maybe a tail. Yes,
(07:40):
people are born sometimes to the tail, perhaps male nipples.
Oh man, I'm so tired of like. It used to
really bother me. It's like, why are these here? Is
there no purpose? You guys aren't using them right, I
mean not like right now. No, I'm just saying you're
not using them correctly. Oh, I see, we're a family show.
(08:06):
Did you guys see I just really fast? Did you
see the article about the Atlanta Native couple? Uh? Josh
and Chuck posted this quick thing of a woman who
left her job to find a male partner, oh, to
to breast feat feed at like adults. And this is
apparently a huge thing. Is it like a like a
(08:27):
fetishy thing? I think it is. Yeah, But he doesn't
have some sort of strange disorder that makes him some
sort of breast milk vampire. Does she like have to
burp him and stuff? I don't know, but but I
did some looking into this story, and it appears that
there's a whole counterculture of people who do this, who
(08:48):
believe that there are massive health benefits for both parts. Yeah,
there are people who say that their health benefits. Yet
and perhaps that is an episode for another day. And
perhaps perhaps you are right, and hey, it's tough to
be happy, so I wish them the best of luck.
It sounds like it's consensual returning to organs. So we've
got these things, we need many of them. There's some
(09:11):
that we don't particularly need need to live, right, You
can go without a kidney both, you could go without
wisdom teeth. What do you do when the important ones fail?
The ones that are not like add on packages to
the car that is your body, but the stuff that's
(09:32):
like the engine and the transmission. Well, for thousands and
thousands and thousands of years, when people's organs failed, they died. Yep.
That was it, sometimes quickly, sometimes and prolonged, excruciatingly painful
ways the human body. To bring it to our current
capitalist society, the human body was a product with planned obsolescence,
(09:55):
no warranties and no returns, no exchanges either. And that's
not to say that over the years, throughout history, medical
science hasn't been attempting to replace these things in dying
humans when their their heart is giving out, or their
liver is dying or something like that. We've attempted humans
(10:16):
many times to try and replace these things. Yeah, not
you knowlan me, but fellow members of our species have
been experimenting with oregan transplants since at least the seventeenth century,
and animals and in humans, and along the way there
were many, many, many gruesome, horrific and tragic failures. A
(10:44):
lot of them we don't even know about because they
were never written down, right, but we do have early examples. Yeah,
like in sixteen sixty, um, a bone graft was attempted
using a dog's skull and actually successfully attached this graph
to a humans head. Yeah, yeah, we see the animal transplants,
(11:08):
the practice of putting animal components into a human body,
where um, we're not unheard of. I mean at the time,
it probably seemed like a logical jump to make, you know,
why not, let's just give it a shot. And that
could have also been at the what if stage. Yeah sure,
(11:28):
especially if you're getting desperate trying to save somebody, I mean,
and if someone is on their last legs, you try anything,
and in that desperation. In nineteen o five, uh, there
were some doctors who took slices of a rabbit kidney.
They put it into a child and it did seem
to improve kidney function at least for a little while. Unfortunately,
(11:49):
the child did die shortly after that from all from
pulmonary congestion. Right. And then in the same year nineteen
o five, doctors manage to transplant a cornea into the
damaged die of a laborer restoring his site. That's that,
to me is crazy to think about in nine o five,
(12:10):
like any kind of eye surgery back then, that's like
buying a lottery tickets every day for a week and winning. Yeah.
Then in nineteen and six we have a French surgeon,
Matteo Jubile, who attempted to save two patients lives they
were suffering from renal failure by transplanting goat kidney into
(12:31):
one of the patients and a pig kidney into the other,
and they died shortly there after work. And I think
what the big takeaway is from a lot of these
early examples is that these organs are incredibly specific. They
and this just goes into the whole idea of being
on a transplant list or like getting you have to
get just the right one, has to match your blood type,
(12:51):
has to There are a lot of factors involved that
you know, will make this work, otherwise your body will
literally reject this organ right in this There were other
attempts through the thirties and on and on and with
each of these, uh, with each of these failures that
were hard lessons learned, and it looked like it maybe
(13:14):
it might be something that was just going to be
beyond the bounds of reliable medical technology and science at
least that is until the first successful oregan transplant in
December of nineteen fifty four. Yeah, it was this guy
named Ronald Herrick. He was the first one. He had
a successful transplant procedure. Pretty awesome, Um, it was. It's
(13:36):
a cool story to actually and and there's a house
Stuff Works article on organ donation where you can find
this story. Um. He he had a twin brother named Richard,
and one of his you know, his kidneys were failing,
and his brother basically decided, well, what if I give
one of my kidneys? And the doctor saw this was
(13:58):
really interesting because it hadn't been successful in the past,
but because their genetics were so close almost identical, uh,
they thought perhaps it would work. So the doctors didn't
have much faith that this would actually be carried out,
even though, you know, they have faith in themselves and
being able to make the procedure happen. They don't think
(14:18):
it will. The organ itself will take. The great thing
is that it did work. Both of them survives, and
they went on to live happily ever after. Right or
did they? Yeah? I mean that part. We're kidding on
that part. No one does that. But they did. Okay, yeah,
they did great. They both recovered at least downer you are, sir, Uh, Yeah,
(14:45):
I guess I'm more what's a what's a word for downer?
And that starts with a B? So we can do
it like a m benjie bad attitude. That's pretty good. No,
that's terrible. Well that's why you're You're right. You're absolutely right,
(15:05):
and there's no reason to be down, is there? Because
this worked very well and after this watershed moment, more
and more successful transplants took place. So today, at least
in the US and really globally, if you are someone
with enough money and enough luck and enough opportunity, you
really can get a second chance at life with a
(15:29):
new organ. We cannot emphasize how amazing this is and
how technology is still since I'm gonna try to be
positive for their podcast. I appreciate it. You know, uh,
we still know that this medical technology continues to evolve
at a breakneck pace, you know, doing amazing things. If
(15:50):
a child, for a child born today the day you're
hearing this, by the time they are eighteen, and is
quite possible that they will be able to buy uh
grown organs grown in a lap, not taken from another person,
or to take possibly organs from genetically modified animals or
(16:13):
entirely entirely synthetic things. However, we're not there yet at
this point. Your best the best and only way that
you can get another organ is by getting it from
another person. Many people volunteer to donate their own organs,
(16:34):
like the twin we mentioned earlier, either a kidney or
you know, you can live with one kidney like you said, no,
you can chop a liver almost in half and yeah,
and will regenerate almost as full size. Or if you
are a person with the driver's license in the US,
you are incentivized to be an organ donor because you
(16:57):
get a little discount. And what they do is they
just say, well, if the worst thing happens, the worst
thing for you, at least then something great might happen
for some other people, which is a pretty terrifying thought.
But at the same time, you know, if you're dead,
depending on your religious and spiritual beliefs, then hey, who cares,
(17:20):
somebody else can use it. You can't take him with you,
you know. And arguably you could say this is a
form of extending someone's life if you are if a
piece of you lives on in someone else. Absolutely, the
pharaohs of Egypt would probably disagree though. I mean, they
had all of their organs pulled out and put into
jars and preserved in their tombs, you know, so that
(17:43):
they could have them in the after life, and that
was part of the that was part of the belief
system at the time, you know. And there there's still
some there's still some religions and belief systems that do
not allow for Oregon donation, like the Roma don't practice
it because they believe you need your physical body and
all its components for at least the first year, because
(18:06):
you have to retrace your steps. And now we know
not Now we know that this this stuff does work.
It gives the average person a chance to be a
hero and should be quite candid. This is a situation
where people need heroes. Between two thousand and eight, there
(18:28):
were more than thousand living donations. It's donations from somebody
who gave theory will survive after UH. In two thousand
and six, nearly forty six percent of organ donors were
living donors, So that accounts for about twenty one point
six percent of all organs donated. So like Matt's Matt,
(18:50):
you said, you can donate part of your liver and live,
and donate part of a lung, part of your pancreas.
You can donate a whole kidney or a part of
your intestines. You do have to be in pretty darn
good health to make a donation like this. Oh, I mean,
it is true that there are only a few prohibitive
factors that could stop you certain diseases, being HIV positive
(19:12):
or something like that. Um, but you know, still, I
don't think anyone would want my liver. Probably, Ben, do
we have a stat about how often direct family members
are the ones that are doing this donation, because that
would just seems to me that would sure save a
lot of this this process to write these lists and
the waiting list of search for compatibility, Well, we don't
(19:34):
have that exactly, but we do know according to the
American Transplant Foundation that of about five thousand living donations
that occur that they watched, only one in four of
the donors was not biologically related to the recipient, at
least from their perspective. Interesting, it's not. It's not legal
(19:57):
to buy or sell organs here in the US for transplant,
but it is legal to buy and sell them for
research purposes. So as long as you say, well, sorry,
uncle Sam, this is not for me. I am doing
a science project. And we've got a couple more stats
(20:18):
if you want. According to the Department of Health and
Human Services, more than two thousand new names are added
to the national waiting list for oregan transplants. And to
get that's every month and every day, the day you
are listening to this podcast, Ladies and gentlemen, in the
(20:39):
US alone, about eighteen people die while waiting for an
oregan transplant. So these people, these voluntary donors, living or dead,
are doing terrific, wonderful, and much needed work, and we
need more. But here's the thing, not all of these
(21:00):
donors are volunteers. As it turns out, quite a few
of them are victims, and we'll get more into that
after we take a quick break. So, as you can
(21:21):
tell from the statistics we covered earlier everything that we've
talked about thus far, the need for organs far outweighs
the supply for organs. And what happens then there is
a basically a gulf that needs to be filled. And
as we know, when there's money to be made, people
(21:41):
are gonna come along and fill that golf. Yeah, when's
when supply demand don't meet, there's gonna be profit. And uh,
that's what we see, and the question becomes existential. You
know what I mean? This is this is not well,
I steal a Selca or an a Lantra from someone
because I want a Selca or a Lancha, or God
(22:03):
forbid a Honda Odyssey, which is not worth it. Uh,
this is a question of survival. If you are sitting
next to someone listening to this, and you're close to
that person, look at each other. What would you do
to keep them alive? Would you donate your kidney? If
given the opportunity, would you find them a heart? The
(22:26):
average heart will beat approximately two point five billion times
in the course of an average person's life, So now
you need to start thinking about the age of this
heart you would procure, because honestly, you'll get more mileage
the younger that transplant source is. Well, it's true. Unfortunately,
(22:49):
it's true, and let's be honest. This is just my
personal opinion here. Some of the results of this come
about because the American medical system is a joke without
a punchline. People are dying due to UM due to
a phenomenally byzantine system of jacked up prices for operations
(23:13):
and medicines that would be affordable in many other countries.
This is again, that is just my opinion, but they're
there are numerous facts that point to UM that that
point to a very poor performance on the part of
the US medical system in comparison to the rest of
the developed world. I mean, if we are considering the
(23:34):
entire population, we're only considering the people who can pay
the price tag, then the US medical system is the
best in the world. Look at the examples. You see
if people that you know are in the hospital for
three or four days and then their insurance gets cut
off or like you know, the it's maxes out and
they're left with like a ten thousand dollar bill, for
being in the hospital for a few days just so
they can breathe, or of course, right and then be
(23:59):
in debt for the rest of their lives or bankrupts. Right,
So this I mean, and that maybe is a sub
I know, it's a touch of one for a lot
of people. So that will perhaps be a subject of
a future show. I don't know what you guys think.
And of course we can anticipate the arguments people say, well,
medical care is not free. That is true, and that's
something we can explore in a future episode. Right now,
(24:22):
In the case of kidneys, which are by far one
of the most common organs transplanted donated harvested traffic, only
seventeen percent of the annual demand is being met, and
due to again skyrocketing medical cost the vast majority of
US citizens have virtually no way of affording a living donor.
(24:45):
So make no mistake, legal organ transplants, like many other operations,
are overwhelmingly out of the reach of a lot of people.
Not to mention, maybe you're just so far down the list.
It's just the this is not on your side. People
will do desperate things in times of this kind of stress. Yeah,
(25:06):
that's a really good point, because even if we're talking
about people who have enough capital or income to to
have the best medical care in the world, right and
maybe survive as long as they can on the list,
then there's some things you know, you just can't legally buy.
So imagine, imagine, Matt, that you are a multimillionaire but dope,
(25:31):
but you can't you can't afford this legal avenue, and
that leaves you with two options. Yeah, I guess I
would die or I would find a way to get one.
Guess which one people tend to choose. I'm guessing they
just take kidneys. According to the u N, there are
(25:54):
three broad categories of organ trafficking. Number one our cases
involving track lookers that force or actually deceive victims into
giving up an organ. Example might be persons kidnapped, their
organ is harvested, or or the this this is the
one that everyone knows from movies. Right. You meet a
(26:15):
charming stranger, a great cool guy or girl, or group
of people, and you party a little harder than you intended,
and the next thing you know, yeah, you wake up
in a tub of ice in the hotel and there's
some staples on your side. That's shilling Um. Well, I
(26:36):
talked to you guys about this before the show, the
movie Sympathy from Mr. Vengeance. I think this is a
it's a really really dark movie. It's beautifully made them
but for kids. But it involves this very thing Um,
and it points to some of the conditions that might
lead someone to enter into an even an agreement with
these type of folks. Where one of the main characters
(26:58):
has a sister who needs I believe it's a kidney,
and she's on this waiting list but it's not working
out and it's taking too long and she's not doing well.
So the main character UM finds these gangsters and agrees
with them, like, Okay, I'm gonna you're gonna take out
my kidney and we're going to do the operation. Instead,
(27:18):
they knocked him out, take his kidney and his money,
and disappear, right. And this this is common enough to
be a trope in a lot of fiction as far
as how often it actually happens that way in real life,
it's it's tough to fresh proof. But that's not the
only case. You said. There are three categories, right, So
the second category involves cases where victims formally or informally
(27:42):
agree to sell an organ and then are cheated out
of money. So the thing for the film is almost
a combination of the two. Are then cheated out of
the money or paid less than promised and threatened, um,
you know totally, you'll take what we give you exactly.
You're lucky to leave with your life. I mean, that's
the thing. These are um opportunistic, manipulative folks that are
(28:03):
that are doing these things. They are finding people in
their time of need, their time of most desperation, and
you know, turning the screws on the criminals. Yeah. Well,
and sometimes it even does happen voluntarily where someone will
fly to Turkey or something to give their their kidney
(28:23):
four or five thousand dollars, you know, four ten thousand
dollars US. Meanwhile, the person who is taking the kidney
is going to make ten times that, twenty times that. Yeah,
And as as as problematic as Ben said, as as
are medical system is at least you do have some
assurances and you know everything's documented and you know, nothing
like that would ever happen, and hopefully your chances of
(28:46):
survival are much higher because it's cleaner and they're they're
better standards for care. But there's there's another thing that
to see here. We I don't want to jump ahead
too far other than to say there is a vast
criminal element to this. And this is something that happens.
Whenever something is illegal and people are going to do,
(29:09):
there will be, as you said, no opportunistic people involved.
Imagine having a gambling debt. You're in over your head,
you have no hope of paying this off within the
time allotted to you. And then well, no, let's say
I have a gambling debt to you. Let's say, what's
a massive amount of money to oh for gambling? One
(29:30):
million dollars? Okay, So I had a wild night in Macau,
and now I owe you, the uh, the shadowy leader
of the underworld, one million dollars. And you told me
I have forty eight hours, our forty seven. And I'm dragged,
you know, in into whatever palatial place you have, uh
(29:53):
And and then you make it very clear that you're
you're fine with killing me, but but you give me
a chance. You tell me I can give up you know,
my kidney or part of my lunger, my liver. And
of course people are going to say yes to something
like that it's horrific, but they will. And then there's
(30:14):
the third case, which to me is one of the saddest.
I have to say, guys, in this example, it would
be it would make a lot more sense if it
was maybe a hundred thousand dollars, because they would make
that if you own a million dollars, Yeah, they would
just kill me and take and harvest because they could.
They could pretty much make that from your entire body.
I would go to the chop shop. Yikes, don't do it. No,
(30:39):
don't do it. I mean I've never started gambling. I've
never gambled, and I don't intend to start now because
I am frightened by this scenario. No, it's true. I
mean even you know I I've played some slots here
and there, but I don't think I could ever know that.
I thought you were about to say, No, it's true.
I guess I would have to do that. Well, you know,
(31:00):
when faced with that situation and I have to take
care of my investment. Oh yeah, ice cold, I respect
you though. Number three, this is perhaps one of the saddests. Yes.
The third example is when a vulnerable person receives treatment
for some ailment. Perhaps it's real. Perhaps it's not only
(31:21):
to find when they come out of surgery or whatever
procedure they went through, they find that one or more
of their organs have been removed during the operation, and
it ranges from what organs are taken in this procedure um.
And this is one of the more terrifying. I mean,
these are all terrifying, but this one to me. Trusting
(31:43):
someone going into a surgery or something like that only
to find that something completely different has happened. Yikes. We're
talking about completely disenfranchised people that have no recourse, migrant workers,
homeless people, the impoverished, the illiterate. They are just easy
targets for these folks who want to prey on the
fact that they have no one to protect them. And
(32:05):
they can be any age, they can be any you know,
create race, ethnicity, whatever sort of label you want to
attach to an example of the human species, as long
as they got the goods and by that I mean kidneys, livers,
any of these organs that are you know, ultimately pretty
easy to remove in a bench, which is horrifying in
(32:25):
and of itself, especially when you consider that you know,
these are not done in sanitary conditions. These are not
done in clean rooms, you know, well yeah, and the
fact that they could be removed and then you can
still live depending on how you were treated after and
what type of process they took to actually remove it
and then fix you up, which is that to me
(32:48):
is awful. Can imagine living after that just happening to
you the PTSD that you would experience in your life.
I personally would be thrilled to be alive, sure, because
think of the time and money you save if you're
working with volume on sutures, on cleaning up. You know,
(33:11):
are you saying I mean, I'm trying to just figure
out why it's in their best interest to leave these
people alive in the first place. I think that a
lot of it is because it is a transaction, you know.
So if it's a transaction, then it's ultimately a business
and if the business model is uh, you know, if
(33:34):
you established consistency, people will only come back to you
or only go pay you if they know they're going
to live. So if we're around the street turns out
that you just kill people and take their organs, which
we do have cases of that, then people aren't going
to go to you with their gambling debts or their
um blood money of one sort or another. And and okay,
(33:58):
so we said earlier that sidneys make up of this
illegal organ trade, But do you know why it's It's
not just because you can take one and sell, although
I think that's a huge part of it. It's also
because of the rising rates of diabetes, high blood pressure,
heart problems and such in across the globe. So you
(34:21):
need those the filtration system that are the kidneys which
are failing across the board. And for everyone who might
think this is this is a strange thing for us
to cover, we would argue that this is an example
of not one, but multiple international conspiracies, not theories. And again,
a conspiracy just means people working together in secret toward
(34:44):
a common goal. Organized crime necessitates conspiracies. This involves recruiters,
people who transport the patient, underground, medical staff, middleman contractors, buyers,
and banks that store the organs because remember, organs don't
keep And a lot of people throughout the history of
(35:05):
oregan transplants have died because an oregan was pulled from
a cadaver that have been dead for hours. You know.
So this stuff is on ice and and on the
good side. On the legal side, there's this amazing logistics
chain of how to of how people move an organ
(35:26):
and keep it stored on ice across the country or
across the ocean to save someone's life. And this can
be a good thing. It can be a good thing
for the for the law side. The problem is because
these networks are so large, when they get exposed, it
will a lot of times be one arm or one
(35:47):
one section of a network, and you never really get
to see the larger picture because you know, when you're
operating underground like this, you just pick up shop and
get out of there if there isn't a good paper trail. Right, Yeah,
So let's talk about some facts about organ trafficking. So
(36:09):
I'll start with one. Organ trafficking accounts for five to
ten percent of all kidney transplants worldwide. Mind blowing to me.
That's like saying, uh, a llegal car sales account for
ten percent of all cars purchased in you know, in
the U s Or he just wouldn't ever associate that.
(36:29):
I don't know. And according to the w h OH,
the World Health Organization, the illegal trade and kidneys has
risen to a level that an estimated ten thousand. Black
market operations involving purchased human organs now take place every year,
and according to a couple of organizations organ Failure Solutions,
(36:50):
Organs Watch and e s O T, the typical organ
donor as a male about twenty eight point nine, let's
say twenty nine years old, with an annual income of
four hundred and eighty dollars, while the typical recipient is
a male of about forty eight point one years old
with an annual income of fifty three thousand dollars. So
(37:13):
the discrepancy there between the donor and the recipient is
pretty telling. And organs aren't just used for transplants. There's
a demand for illicit experimentation from unethical scientists. Think of
these as the modern version of resurrection men robber threat
(37:35):
resurrection men were grave robbers, especially in during a time
when it was legal to experiment on cadavers for med
schools and stuff, but it was illegal to procure the bodies.
So that's a chilling but not entirely inaccurate comparison. And
(37:57):
then of course there are there are other body parts
such as bones or genitalia that are used for uh
magical rituals and the profit margins here can be outrageous.
In July of two thousand nine, Levy Itsac Rosenbaum was
arrested in Brooklyn for conspiring to arrange the sale of
(38:18):
an Israeli citizens kidney to an undercover FBI agent for
a hundred and sixty thousand dollars. He said he'd been
selling kidneys for ten years underground. He paid ten thousand
for a kidney and sold it for a hundred and
sixty thousand. And there are an unsettling number of examples
of at least parts of networks that have been exposed to.
Al Jazeera really recently put out a story, i think
(38:42):
in the February about a small syndicate in Indonesia in
this place called Java, West Java, where this really small
village that had a population of thirty people uh a
large number of them sold their kidneys or for around
five thousand dollars each um, and it was being run
(39:03):
out of a state hospital. It really crazy stuff like that,
just some bad people who are working with a couple
other bad people inside a state run organization. A story
from the Guardian in two thousand nine discussed how some
some pathologists in Israel were harvesting organs from Palestinians and
several others thousand the ninety nineties. It has ended officially
(39:27):
at least, which is nice. And if you search for
this kind of the stuff, just just put Oregon Harvesting
Network into you know, Google, and then click on the
news column and just go back, and it's prevalent. There's
a lot of it. And in neither of the cases
that met just mentioned, neither in Indonesia nor in Israel
(39:48):
were these state sanctioned things. These were underground cabals operating
and then they were eventually exposed. And that's almost always
how it is, except in the People's Republic of China
and the People's Republic of China, you can see numerous
accusations that say the government itself is harvesting organs from
(40:14):
executive prisoners, or, as claimed in a PBS documentary from
two thousand fifteen, that the government is actually collecting organs
from live prisoners or practitioners of a spiritual group uh
of a spiritual belief system called Falling Gong. The idea
(40:35):
here is that China is arbitrarily imprisoning this minority religious
group and then torturing them, killing them selling their organs,
getting rich off what's called transplant tourism. Yep. And and
again you can find it in the US, you can
find it in Brazil and South Africa. It's this practice
is occurring all over the globe. So you guys, why
(40:59):
is the still going on? Why is this still so prevalent.
I would say there's several reasons. One of the big
ones would be, uh, demand, And if we're saying demand,
what we need to look at will be the precipitous
rise of health conditions in the you know what, in
(41:20):
the world entire because there's this big stereotype of terribly
unhealthy Americans, right Uh, that stereotype has some truth in it.
One in nine or twenty six million Americans have kidney
disease and most probably don't know it. But obesity and
diabetes and related things are on the rise in the
(41:42):
developing world as well, So there are more people with
worse parts. And I think as long as that situation continues,
until we can grow stuff in a vat, until we
can all live a more healthy lifestyle. And I have
not volunteering, by the way, because I'm setting my ways
(42:03):
and they are terrible. Until we can iron man or
chainey up some some suitable technological or mechanical replacement. The problem,
the problem with this stuff been is that it's still
going to favor those that are wealthy because it will
cost money. It's a service either. You know, it's not
(42:25):
easy to remove an organ and put it back in
for sure. And as we start to develop, you know,
more high tech ways of doing this, whether it's lab
grown or what have you, it's gonna be like these
hypothetical situations with life extension technology. Who is that going
to be for? It's going to be for the upper class,
which is the class that is basically in control. That's
(42:49):
a harrowing point because on the surface, the legal organ trade,
at least if you if you look at the rules
of the guidelines for the list, they say that this
a person's placement on the list is evaluated by factors
that are entirely biologically related severity of illness, time spent waiting,
(43:10):
blood type, match potential, and UH. At least according to
American Transplant Foundation, income, race, and social status are never
taken into account in the allocation process, which sounds like
a beautiful thing until you take into account means to
(43:31):
move yourself up on that list that aren't necessarily proven,
but you know, colluding with someone who controls the list,
or staying or or you know, the means to participate
in this illegal market which is making hundreds of million,
hundreds of millions of dollars minimum, probably more than an
(43:53):
estimated billion. And also also it's tough to find these
sorts of rings and wipe them out entirely. You know,
people's survival instinct is good. The money it's just so profitable, right,
(44:15):
and these are people often operating across international boundaries. So
at this point, at that at this point, regardless of
the various solutions to the various causes for this sort
of situation, it just that it doesn't seem to be
(44:36):
going away. This is really tough because in a lot
of the black markets that we've looked at in the past,
it seems as though the legalization of whatever product that
is being sold can kind of solve that black market
because it then becomes a free market thing, right, But
with this situation, you can't really legalize just the voluntary
(44:59):
donation and receiving of organs from other humans at least
I can't foresee away. Well, they just a lot is
left up to chance. When you go the legal route,
and it almost seems like the illegal route, you might
be more likely to at least have the perception that
you're going to get what you need, you know, with
about having to jump through as many hoops or weight
(45:20):
as long, and you know, have less uncertainty, and you
could even hypothetically higher an entire network, so you could
get the level of care that you would expect from
a you know, from a top notch hospital if you
just by a doctor and her his services for this
(45:44):
one thing, if you just contracted out, it would cost
an enormous amount of money. But if a new kidney
gives you another nine years of life, a lot of
people would see that as a as a fair trade,
you know. And I'm sure that a lot of the
people who are participating in this illegal organ trafficking are
(46:04):
also doing it without of desperation and are not monstrous people,
you know, they they are. Possibly maybe it's more like
a matchmaking thing where they meet someone who wants money,
and they have the money, and they say, okay, here,
let's make a deal. Maybe it is. It may well
(46:26):
be consensual many times, but also many times it is not. Yeah,
because we also we've seen that this matches up with
the act of human trafficking as well, right, I mean
where people will be treated like cattle and taken to
another place where this will happen to them. It's been
reported on a lot by the u N how closely
(46:48):
linked human trafficking and organ trafficking is. So you know,
it's it's weird how far ranging this this process or
how how much it encompasses. It's also one of these
kind of devil's bargain scenarios where you don't really know
the cost, the actual cost of what you're buying. You know,
(47:08):
you're you're paying money, and maybe you you can afford it.
And maybe you are a wealthy person that has decided
to go this route because of the hoops required to
get on a legal list to get you know, what
you need when you need it. So maybe you decided
to go this route because you feel like you can
make it happen quicker for yourself or a loved one.
But you don't know who was manipulated, who was taking
(47:32):
advantage of to get that for you, So you are
becoming part of this problem by you know, feeding it. Yeah,
absolutely agree this, Okay, let's end on an up note,
if we can. I know this has been a you know,
I took that Debbi Downer advice to heart, so I'm
trying to see some silver linings. There is a huge
(47:56):
financial incentive now for medical technology US and for inventors
to create and geneticist as well, to create some sort
of viable alternative, because even if the illegal organ trafficking
networks expand and expand even more so in size, we're
(48:19):
at a point where taking things from one human and
putting them in another is probably not enough. So what
we're going to need to do as a species is
to create a viable alternative, and people are working around
the clock to do so. So this situation may become
eventually a thing of the past. You know, eventually, hopefully
(48:43):
your children and your grandchildren will hear about this age
in medicine and treat it with the same incredulity that
we used to treat stories of a world before germ theory.
They used to take organs out of one person and
put it in another person, and they used to use
hands to type what Why don't you just think it
(49:07):
into your Google? I think it is weird to think
how long this conversation will last digitally. If the Internet
stays around for long enough, people people might actually listen
to a go it's too scary. But yeah, we hope
that you. We hope that you found this episode worthwhile.
Do you have uh, do you have any thoughts on
(49:30):
organ transplants ethically, physically, biologically? Have you ever had an
organ transplant or maybe donated one of your own? You
you want to write to us and tell us about it,
We would love to hear. Ye. Have you ever made
it to the end of the organ trail without dying
of Dysenterry? I did once, but well I did several times.
(49:51):
I played on easy mode and I still lost some people.
You monster. One guy broke a leg, uh and then
died of dysentery. Man, it was rough. This is Harry.
I think it's like the base level, and then there's
other stuff that's like we really had to bring it
back there all I think we should. I really just
(50:11):
trying to lighten things up a little bit. Guys. This
has got pretty got pretty pretty dark here, you know.
I want to play it again and then name members
of our party, like after after you guys and some
of our listeners. But I'm afraid of you know, what
am I gonna do if one of you guys doesn't
make it over the river. You know we're speaking of parties.
Let's have a shout out corner party shut at corners.
(50:35):
Our first shout out goes to Dakota who works at
the postal service and listens to our show all delivering mail.
That's kind of cool. Dakota. Let us know that watch
Mojo often uses our videos as uh kind of source
material for their own YouTube channel, which is kind of
what we do with other YouTube channels as well. We'll
(50:56):
use references and but we did some checking and that
they do give us on screen credit with texts, so
we're totally cool with that. And the last thing, he
Dakota wanted us to say hello to long John and
I don't know who that is, but it's it's Dakota's
friend the watch Moja. They also I think they did
a list awhile back where they had different conspiracy type
(51:19):
chose and yeah, YouTube conspiracy theories lists. So Ben Boland
was and Matt and Matt Frederick we were both on
that list. We were guys, we're all on the list.
And next we have Matt s on Twitter, Matt you said,
have you considered doing an episode on the theory that
we are living in a simulation? Matt you also sent
(51:41):
Matt S. You also sent video of la Musk discussing
this topic, which you, Matt f I am sure enjoyed immensely.
I did. Yeah, I think I shared it with you guys.
Maybe I didn't, Maybe we just talked about it. It's
the one where Elon Musk is asked a question about
simulated universe theory, and he basically says we have a
one in one billion chance of existing in base reality, which,
(52:06):
if you dig into it a little bit, it's a
little off. His numbers are a little off, but it's
still fascinating to think that one of the richest humans
on the planet believes that. Next one, we have one
via Facebook from Corey C. Thanks for keeping me hip
to all the neat, strange and weird things you guys cover.
Then we have a little hashtag party here. Hashtagsad douche,
hashtag all hail our, age less Overlord Ben, hashtag bag
(52:29):
of Badgers, hashtag the only medal is created with filth.
Hashtag give him at his boat back hashtag tell Frank
I said Hi. Yeah, is this someone that knows Frank? Yeah?
You talked about Frank a couple of times. Um, I
think you even mentioned that you should say hi. Have
you ever seen Frank? See Frank, say hi to him.
He's a great guy. I'm just wondering if this is
someone that knows Frank, Like in the real world, Frank
(52:49):
does get around. Uh. Maybe there are many Francs, the
many faces of Frank, the many faces of Frank. And
this thus ends our shout out corner for today's declash.
But never fear. If you would like a shout out
from us, we do. We do two or three each episode.
(53:10):
If you have something you want to say to all
the other listeners of the show, then hit us up
on Twitter and Facebook where we are Conspiracy Stuff. And
if you don't like the social media stuff, go ahead
and send us an email. It's really easy. We are
Conspiracy and how Stuff Works dot com.
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