The Red Market: On the Trail of the World's Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers, and Child Traffickers [Hardcover]

Scott Carney (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 31, 2011

“An unforgettable nonfiction thriller, expertly reported….A tremendously revealing and twisted ride, where life and death are now mere cold cash commodities.”
—Michael Largo, author of Final Exits

Award-winning investigative journalist and contributing Wired editor Scott Carney leads readers on a breathtaking journey through the macabre underworld of the global body bazaar, where organs, bones, and even live people are bought and sold on The Red Market. As gripping as CSI and as eye-opening as Mary Roach’s Stiff, Carney’s The Red Market sheds a blazing new light on the disturbing, billion-dollar business of trading in human body parts, bodies, and child trafficking, raising issues and exposing corruptions almost too bizarre and shocking to imagine.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Carney writes with a novelist's eye for character and detail and a muckraking reporter's gift for asking uncomfortable questions about stuff that most of us shy away from learning too much about."  (Cory Doctorow, editor at BoingBoing.net)

 "Downright hallucinatory" - Laura Miller, Salon

"[A] lucid and alarming book . . . . Carney knows how to tell a story and digs deeply. --The Wall Street Journal

Mr. Carney writes with considerable narrative verve, slamming home the misery of what he has witnessed with passion and visceral detail. - New York Times

The Red Market is a reminder that there are some problems that science alone cannot solve. --Nature

“The Red Market is a thrilling adventure into the global body business, with keen insight into the economics that drive it. Scott Carney investigates both our insatiable need for replacement human parts and the uncanny and often disturbing ways we go about getting them.” (Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail)

“The Red Market is an unforgettable nonfiction thriller, expertly reported. Scott Carney takes us on a tremendously revealing and twisted ride, where life and death are now mere cold cash commodities.” (Michael Largo, author of Final Exits: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of How We Die)

From the Back Cover

An in-depth report that takes readers on a shocking tour through a macabre global underworld where organs, bones, and live people are bought and sold on the red market

Investigative journalist Scott Carney has spent five years on the ground tracing the lucrative and deeply secretive trade in human bodies and body parts—a vast hidden economy known as the "red market." From the horrifying to the ridiculous, he discovers its varied forms: an Indian village nicknamed "Kidneyvakkam" because most of its residents have sold their kidneys for cash; unscrupulous grave robbers who steal human bones from cemeteries, morgues, and funeral pyres for anatomical skeletons used in Western medical schools and labs; an ancient temple that makes money selling the hair of its devotees to wig makers in America—to the tune of $6 million annually.

The Red Market reveals the rise, fall, and resurgence of this multibillion-dollar under­ground trade through history, from early medical study and modern universities to poverty-ravaged Eurasian villages and high-tech Western labs; from body snatchers and surrogate mothers to skeleton dealers and the poor who sell body parts to survive. While local and international law enforcement have cracked down on the market, advances in science have increased the demand for human tissue—ligaments, kidneys, even rented space in women's wombs—leaving little room to consider the ethical dilemmas inherent in the flesh-and-blood trade. At turns tragic, voyeuristic, and thought-provoking, The Red Market is an eye-opening, surreal look at a little-known global industry and its implications for all our lives.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1 edition (May 31, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061936464
• ISBN-13: 978-0061936463
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #281,520 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Investigative journalist Scott Carney has worked in some of the most dangerous and unlikely corners of the world. He is a contributing editor at Wired and his work also appears in Mother Jones, Foreign Policy, Discover, Outside, and Fast Company. He has appeared on a variety of radio and television stations including NPR and National Geographic TV. In 2010 he won the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism for the story "Meet the Parents" which tracked an international kidnapping-to-adoption ring . His first book, "The Red Market: On the Trail of the World's Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers and Child Traffickers" was published by William Morrow in 2011. He first traveled to India while he was a student at Kenyon College in 1998 where he learned hindi. He has spent more than half a decade in South Asia.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Summer Must-Read. June 8, 2011

By cmpm

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I first heard about The Red Market after reading an intriguing Publisher's Weekly interview [...] with author/journo/anthropologist Scott Carney. Based on an investigative journalism series for Mother Jones during 2009 and 2010, Carney delves into the black market trade of the human body - both living and deceased, whole and in part - following a set of circumstances that left him in the guardianship of the corpse of an American student overseas.

This is where most reviews would say something like "not for the faint of heart" or something like that and it's true. Carney has taken a very frank (and graphic) look inside the human body trade but he does so without coming off as a sensationalist. Much of his work revolves around India and China - places where poverty and overpopulation have contributed to the profiteering and exploitation of international adoption, kidney/other organ donations and fertility methods (egg harvesting/surrogacy).

I expected to be more shocked by accounts like those of an entire village of indigent women in India who saw kidney donation as their only way out of poverty (Note: it never is!) by agreeing to a small amount of money up front only to be swindled out of the additional money they were promised afterwards AND left without post-operative care. I was less shocked by these deceitful methods of procurement than I was by the attitude of the organ donation recipients: I don't care where it comes from or what it costs, just get it.

Carney has compiled his work into a quick read that poses excellent moral and ethical questions - and I believe sheds some much-needed light on a grim traffic that few here in the U.S. know or think about. I look forward to more interviews with the author about this work in the coming months.

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars interesting but overly preachy June 24, 2011

By M. Hyman VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a book that i really wanted to love. It started out extremely well, with some fascinating stories about the trade in human body parts. It covers many different aspects of the "red market", ranging from skeletons to kidneys, eggs, surrogate parenting, blood and even the gigantic business of collecting and selling human hair.

There are many stories that are chilling, and you can feel and understand the author's passion, as he takes you on a tour of some unexplored or purposefully ignored areas of this trade.

On the other hand, the book also suffers from what I would call righteous indignation. Yes, many of the stories are disturbing, some extremely so. And although the author raises some very interesting and valid points about the implications of anonymity in the marketplace, and the exploitation by the middle men, there is a point, somewhere towards the middle of the book, during which it goes beyond to have more blanket criticisms of both the free market economy and medical research.

The book would have been stronger, perhaps, by presenting some potential solutions to some of the issues rather than outright condemnation, and by having more focus on the facts and a bit less editorializing. Likewise, I would have preferred more science and less ethics.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling nonfiction December 7, 2011

By SH

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

I found "The Red Market" enthralling from location 1. The chapters, adapted from the author's previous essays, are heart-wrenching, showing how humanity's noble goals often result in the mistreatment, coercion, and even death of other (poorer) humans. Humanity is really so incredible and so, so terrible. The book details how humans are used (or use themselves) for their spare parts to try to escape poverty, while middlemen and brokers market their sacrifices as "donations". Carney examines both sides of the market - the consumers who want kidneys, babies, and blood, and the usually impoverished individuals who are paid to give them up (plus the conniving middlemen who are out to make one hell of a buck). It also has a great bibliography for further reading.

My only problem was with the kindle edition, which had some punctuation errors.