‘Courage Isn’t Up to Bank Heist?’ Sell a Kidney : Cash Offered for Live Donors’ Organs

Need money? Sell a kidney, suggests a West German entrepreneur.

Rainer Rene Adelmann von Adelmannsfelden, who once tried to sell babies from the Third World for adoption in West Germany, has opened an agency offering cash for transplant organs from living people.

Although the scheme to match broke but healthy people with the rich and ailing has infuriated West German government officials and state prosecutors, it is apparently legal.

“There is no single statute of law that can simply be pulled out to stop his activity,” said Manfred Steinbach of the Health Ministry.

Adelmann founded his “Organ Bureau” after Frankfurt city authorities last May closed down his agency which tried to sell babies from developing countries to West German couples who wanted to adopt a child.

Scouring public bankruptcy notices, Adelmann offers broke businessmen $44,000 for a kidney, telling them it is medically proven that one healthy kidney is enough.

Selling a kidney, he says in a brochure, is the way back to solvency--”If you don’t have the guts for a life of crime, if your courage isn’t up to the big break-in, the bank heist or a new life abroad.”

“Even if the recipient of the kidney does not survive--you will, both medically and financially,” it adds. “And really, you don’t have many other options.”

Six businessmen down on their luck already have taken up his offer, Adelmann told the Stuttgarter Zeitung newspaper. The surgeries have not yet taken place.

West German health authorities say 4,000 kidneys are needed each year for transplants, but only 1,700 are available due to a lack of donors.

About 5% of the performed operations use kidneys from close family members, the only live donors accepted under West German doctors’ code of ethics.

The controversy over Adelmann’s scheme and international organ trafficking prompted a clinic in Munich to suspend transplant surgery involving kidneys from live donors.

Steinbach of the Bonn Health Ministry said that if Adelmann were allowed to continue, the “noble act of donating would be ruined by being turned into a business.”

He said Bonn hopes to plug existing legal loopholes soon. When it does, he said, the government plans to urge a World Health Organization international campaign against “the organ Mafia.”

Destitute people often advertise human organs for sale in Brazilian newspapers, and in some Asian cities modern clinics openly offer transplant operations with kidneys from live donors.

The outcry has left Adelmann apparently unruffled. Adelmann, who is also known as Baron von Godin, is not bothered by controversy. He styles himself as “a specialist in legal loopholes,” but is reluctant to discuss his organ business with the media.

Before opening his Third World baby agency, he sold noble titles and was the founder of “the Federation of German Foreign Legionnaires.”

Adelmann created an “Assn. for Mutual Human Assistance” parallel to his Organ Bureau. To enter his kidney scheme as a donor or a buyer, customers must pay $55 for association membership.

“Members really are paying for pipe dreams because they know that the transaction can’t possibly take place,” state prosecutor Guenter Spitz said.

But Adelmann says in his brochure that his transplants would not be carried out in West Germany, to avoid potential legal problems.

Peter Knuth, a top official of the West German Medical Assn., expressed concern about stopping the organ trade and said public perceptions on health could be damaged.

“Citizens will get the impression that health can be bought for money,” he said.

Knuth said the only way to stop the business would be for more people to sign pledges to donate their organs at death.

“That would knock the bottom out of the live organ market.”