One of the staple themes of cyberpunk is that in “the future” people will make money by selling their bodily organs (or by stealing other peoples). Well, we are in the future, and organlegging is apparently big business in India.
the police said the scale of this one was unprecedented. Four doctors, five nurses, 20 paramedics, three private hospitals, 10 pathology clinics and five diagnostic centers were involved
And this despite the fact that it is illegal.
Good heavens.
By coincidence, Boing Boing just posted a story about organlegging in North America: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/31/organlegging-nurse-s.html
It brings it home!
Nice catch, although that’s just stealing from corpses, not taking organs from live people. Theft from corpses in the US has been known about for some time. Most famously Alistair Cook, the BBC’s American Correspondent for many years, had his bones stolen after he died.
I’ve never really thought of organlegging as cyberpunk; I first encountered it, even under that name, in Larry Niven Known Space stories written in 1960s/70s.
Oh, I’m sure organlegging has been done before. But much of cyberpunk is focused on the idea of poor people doing what they can to survive in the shadows of a corporate-run world. Organlegging is a perfect idea to drop into that sort of world.