Britons Selling Body Organs to Gain Cash to Pay Bills

The threat of losing their homes because of the inability to repay their mortgage payments has forced many people in Britain to use extraordinary means of finding the cash they need. Many have resorted to selling one of their kidneys as a way of clearing their debts and paying their mortgages.

An investigation into this activity has found that donors are charging as much as £60,000 plus expenses for their kidneys. It was revealed that such donors included a nurse and a taxi driver.

If caught engaging in such activities, Britons face a three-year jail term. Knowing this has not deterred many because they see it as the only resort open to them of getting out of debt fast.

Advertising the sale of a kidney online has become the practice. One such donor, William Henderson, a 43-year old taxi driver from Morecambe in Lancashire, advertised on the Internet offering his kidney for £25,000.

He plans to use the money to pay off his credit card debt, renovate his kitchen and pay his mortgage. However, he is unable to find a surgeon in the UK willing to perform the surgery for him and as a result he wants the recipient to pay the expenses of having the surgery performed abroad. These expenses include the cost of his flight, £1200 to cover the wages he will lose by being absent from work and £1000 for his hotel expenses.

Henderson’s reasons for resort to such extreme measures are that he is deep in debt because his wife left him and lodgers he had from Poland returned home when the factory in which they worked was destroyed by fire. He also claims that it is not greed that forced him to resort to this measure. He feels that in doing this he can save someone’s life and at the same time receive the monetary help he needs.

He is picky about whom he chooses as the recipient of his kidney. He offered it to his ailing brother-in-law and has turned down an offer from a gentleman in Pakistan because he did not believe the man was actually in need of a kidney. In an interview with the Sunday Times, he said of the offers he received, “There wasn’t a needy person involved.  I’d rather meet the person that is going to get it and that will at least rest my mind it’s got somewhere good to go. I want someone to get some use out of it.”

It was when he offered to sell his kidney to an undercover reporter posing as the pregnant wife of a man suffering from kidney failure that his plan was discovered.

Henderson claims he didn’t want any child to grow up without a mother or father as he had done, losing his mother to cancer when he was just a child. He has always been conscious of his health, saying “I had considered the dangers carefully.  I have never abused my body.  I do drink, but not excessively, I exercise regularly and it was a risk I was prepared to take. If I had gone ahead with donating a kidney, the only thing I would have had to avoid was contact sports, but at 43 years old, I wouldn’t be playing sports like that anyway.”

Doctors agree that it is possible to live a long and healthy life with only one kidney, but warn there are potentially life-threatening risks associated with such surgery. Statistics show that one on three donors contract fatal infections or die from blood clots or bleeding.

Tags: getting out of debt, term, monetary help, sell body organs, lodgers, kidney sale, mortgage debts, body