Today we travel to the darker side of organ transplants - when demand is greater than supply, that creates a market, right? Well, yes, but also this time people have to be cut open.
Today we travel to the darker side of organ transplants - when demand is greater than supply, that creates a market, right? Well, yes, but also this time people have to be cut open.
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
Last week, we talked about organ donations through the lens of legal donations
>> Taylor: In the matter of the people of State of California vs. Orenthal James Simpson, case number BA097.
>> Farz: And so, my fellow Americans, ask not.
>> Taylor: What your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
>> Farz: Boom. We are here. Taylor, how are you?
>> Taylor: Good. How are you?
>> Farz: Good. Do you like my radio voice?
>> Taylor: I do. That was nice before this, you were like. But now you're like, everything's fine.
>> Farz: This is for the audience and you. Cole, do you want to go introduce us?
>> Taylor: Yes. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Doomed to Fail. We bring you history's most notorious disasters and epic failures twice a week. This is episode 201. I'm Taylor Dwayne, by fars.
>> Farz: And I am here to continue a tale I started last week. Do you remember what it was?
>> Taylor: Yes. Organ transfers. Donations. Voluntary. And I think we're going to involuntary.
>> Farz: It is some gnarly stuff. Yeah, it is very, very gnarly stuff. So let's go ahead and dive into it. So like you said last week, we talked about organ donations through the lens of legal donations. We talked about the science of it, the history of it, who does it, how do they do it, all that good stuff. But today, like you said, we're going to go into the darker side of things. We're going to look at illegal, voluntary donations, involuntary donations, and the one you missed, the one place on earth where you can legally sell your organs.
>> Taylor: Today. Did we talk. When did we talk about watching Minority Report? I feel like it's been a long time, but we watched it recently and he gets like, an eye transplant in, like, a dirty back room because they can major corneas. It's so gross. For some reason, they have like a moldy sandwich in the fridge in a nice sandwich, and he picks a moldy one. So stupid. Anyway, no, I think we did it because Virginia hall, that scientist, invented the technology that could technically bring us, like, the clear hologram things from Minority Report, not obviously, the magic people who can see the future. Somehow I don't really get how that works. Yeah, that's not real.
>> Farz: Yeah, yeah. Don't do backyard surgeries, people.
>> Taylor: Are you talking about eyes at all?
>> Farz: I'm not, but eyes are something. Corneas are something that people do donate. There's a lot people donate. Women donate eggs. People donate corneas. People donate skin. There's a story I can go into. I didn't write the story down myself entirely, but there was a story, a credible one, about a skin donation that was disgusting. That I can talk about if you remind me towards the end of the episod.
>> Taylor: But yeah, no, just the I donation. If you've been into New York City after Jerry Orbach died, there were like just signs all over the subway that was like, jerry Orbach donated his eyes. And you're like, okay, so weird.
>> Farz: I don't know why. The. I think kind of freaks me out a little bit more. The rest of it.
>> Taylor: Anyway. Anyway, continue. It's going to be gross. Can't wait.
China, India, Pakistan and the Philippines are where most organ donors come from
>> Farz: So the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE and the Gulf states, along with South Korea and Japan, are the. Where the bulk of transplant tourism is from. And that is exactly what it sounds like. It's people going to other countries to take the organs of the people that are there. China, India, Pakistan and the Philippines is where the majority of donors are sourced from. So the majority of people who are voluntarily or involuntarily being having their organs taken are from these areas. There's also an obvious problem to this, beyond everything we're going to talk about here, which I hadn't dwelled on much, but when somebody comes in and buys those organs or does something to obtain organs from the locals, that means the locals don't have a supply of organs if they were to need it as well.
>> Taylor: Yeah. And I feel like the word voluntary is like, Yes.
>> Farz: I use it loosely.
>> Taylor: Yes. It's not like a, yay, I love to give you my kidney. It's like a, I need money for my family.
>> Farz: It's economic coercion.
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah.
>> Farz: Is basically what it is. So these people, like. So they're typically selling organs for the obvious reason we just said it's the money that they need. And India is thought to be the biggest suppliers. Supplier of organs sold illegally. This impacts predominantly men ages 25 to 40 with no education, with the vast majority of them being completely illiterate, with typical incomes ranging in the up to $2 per day range. So that's who we're talking about here.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: For these people, selling a kidney could be the equivalent of two years worth of salary or about $1,500. And like I said, they do it for money. A lot of times they do it to pay off what sounds to me to be indentured servitude debt. That would be someone who is working somebody else's land and that landowner provides them with tools to till and do what they need with the land. But then they have to repay that. And then until it breaks, then you go back to the starting to repay another.
>> Taylor: Right. You don't really. You don't really get out of that.
>> Farz: Yeah. These people's conditions seem to be pretty sad and difficult to overcome. And it's a weird thing that I don't. I will never understand why the people who have the least resources always are the ones who have the most kids. It makes zero sense to me.
>> Taylor: Well, I think it's education and access to birth control.
>> Farz: I know, but the education part, it's like you need to get a PhD to understand the mechanics of it. It's like, it's a very simple thing.
>> Taylor: I know, but there's people in America who don't understand it.
>> Farz: I'm. I'm painting a broad brush here. I'm not. I'm not calling out these folks in India like, we do it. This is also a US Problem.
>> Taylor: No, and. But I think you're right. And that. That's definitely something that, like, we know why, but it doesn't make sense. So, you know. Yeah, exactly.
>> Farz: There was one farmer on a documentary I watched in India. It was really sad. Like, the guy obviously had a really hard life. Like, he looked horrible. He looked like a sack of skin and bones doing the hardest thing in the world. And he was crying because he had sold his kidney earlier in the process to get out of this indentured servitude debt. But because of the fact that he had to keep going more into debt to keep doing what he was doing, he was racking more and more. He ran out of money, and he had three daughters. And he was like, we're going to sell their organs when they're a little bit older. Because his logic was that when he dies, his debt doesn't go away. It passes down to his kids and into their kids. Yeah, it's like, yeah, well, yeah, Wait, no. Student loans actually go away when you die.
>> Taylor: I thought they didn't.
>> Farz: Pretty sure they go away when you die. But that was his logic. He was like, look, if I don't sell their kidneys and raise the funds to get myself out of this debt, then they're just going to inherit it. And this is how kind of the cycle repeats itself. And so that was his logic behind this. Taylor is intently Googling student loan debt.
>> Taylor: It says most do, but some don't. Like a very few don't.
>> Farz: There we go.
>> Taylor: Another thing that doesn't go away when you die is your subscription to a timeshare. I learned that on John Oliver. It goes to your ears.
>> Farz: Yeah, yeah. You have a window of time that you have to express. Those things are so horrible.
In countries where selling organs is illegal, how do hospitals and authorities not realize
So let's go through a Typical example of someone going to India to buy a local citizen's organ. So typically speaking, they're going to spend about 20 to 40 thousand dollars for an illegal organ transplant. By comparison, in the US for like a normal organ transplant for a kidney, you're looking at about 260 to $400,000. So weight like a tenth of the price to go do this illegally and it can be done quicker. So who gets what? Let's break it, break it down to like the middle territory of $30,000. Let's say it's the $30,000 you're going to pay for this organ transplant. What is being exchanged in terms of the cash between the recipients in the, in the parties involved? So brokers and middlemen make between 10 to $15,000. So almost half of everything that is paid goes to them. Doctors in the hospitals will take somewhere around 10 to $12,000. Donors, they get about 1200 to 1500. So they make the least amount of money so far. Then you have police and political bribes which run about 1 to $2,000. So that's where the bulk of, let's say a $30,000 donation, donation purchase goes.
>> Taylor: Right.
>> Farz: So in a country where selling organs is illegal, how do hospitals and authorities not realize that the person is transacting their organs? Well, in most countries there's a thing called an authorization committee that verifies the person doing the donating is not being coerced or doing it for financial gain. So these folks will typically medically screen the donor. Obviously they'll run a psychological evaluation to assess the voluntariness of this. They will be interviewed by the authorization committee. There will be a requirement. If there's, if there's a claim of relation here, there needs to be proof provided of that relation, which could be through the form of affidavits or family photos or if they're not related to the donor, they must come up with some emotional attachment, justification for why they're providing their organs to this recipient.
>> Taylor: That makes sense.
>> Farz: Like I said, the goal, this committee is to ensure that no money's exchanging hands.
>> Taylor: But, but where is that committee? Everywhere or.
>> Farz: Yeah, yeah, it's. Well, not. The US Is very different. Like, the countries that have illegal organ donation problems are the ones where this is the most prevalent. The US Has a dramatically, like, I'm not saying people don't get their organs transacted here. I'm sure they do, but it is not to the scale of what it is in like the Philippines and Pakistan, India and those places. They have These committees that have to go through and make sure they're vetting that individual accordingly because of the US it's like, why are you donating your organ to this person? And it's like what we said yesterday, which Daniel told me about, which was, I'm on this kidney train and I'm just going to donate it because I want someone to donate to my spouse or whatever. Like, there's a logic, there's a logic behind it in the US but like if you're like a 57 year old British Cambridge professor and you're going into the slums of India and you show up with like an 18 year old boy and you're like, this is my friend.
>> Taylor: It's not like your cousin that you care about a lot.
>> Farz: Exactly.
>> Taylor: Like, it's like a dude you found.
>> Farz: Yeah. So the countries that have these authorization committees are the ones where this is a known issue.
>> Taylor: Okay.
>> Farz: Yeah. The whole what they're trying to prevent is this exchange of money. But in reality, the donors, through their brokers, are typically provided falsified documentation, fake IDs, fake marriage certificates, birth certificates. Sometimes the brokers will bribe the authorization committee themselves. I did mention political bribery as part of the transactional costs of all this. The brokers will also coach the donors by making sure they understand they can never talk about money. They can. They have to express their feelings towards the recipient very obviously and transparently. And I didn't. To me, I was like, this has got to be the easiest part. I actually think this is the hardest part of the whole thing. I watched a documentary where the, this broker was trying to convince this guy what he should say to the person to the, when he goes before the authorization committee and he's like smiling, he's like, I'm going to get so much money. It's going to be great. I'm going to have all this money. He's like, no, you can't say that. It's like, then why am I doing it? It's like, because you like the guy. It's like, why do I like him? I don't know. It's like, oh my God, dude.
>> Taylor: Oh my God, stop it. You're going to realize for yourself.
>> Farz: You can see the broker was just like smacking her head like this. But it gives you a sense of the education level and what these people actually understand they're doing right.
>> Taylor: Mm.
>> Farz: In some parts of India, I read wealthy families will legally adopt some poor villager to show familial relations just to streamline the authorization process. Like that's the extent that people are gonna going to here.
>> Taylor: Whoa.
>> Farz: Yeah. And again, if you watch these documentaries of these people in the Philippines, it's just, it's interesting. It's interesting because like in, in the Philippines I felt differently, better than I did in India. So in India I felt like these poor people, like they are in this weird caste system that forces them in this structure. And like I kind of felt more sympathy towards them than I did the guys in the Philippines because they're just like scoundrels, a lot of them. Like they're just like single 23, 25 year old men who just eat, smoke and visit prostitutes all day and they talk about their money they're gonna get and they're like, what are you gonna do with it? Like, I don't know, just go get a bunch of beers. Like it's just a very different incentive structure between them. I don't know, it's probably not appropriate to feel that way. But I did.
>> Taylor: Yeah, I mean I'm sure there's like cases of people who are doing it for, to save their family, but also people who are like, I don't know, I've nothing else to do.
>> Farz: Yeah, it was, I read that it was Some, somewhere around 70% of them had spent all the money they received from this within the first six months. It's, it's like, it's like when people in the US win the lottery and like they have an average like incredibly high suicide rate. Like they don't know what to do with this amount of money because like I said, it's two years worth of salary. Like joke. So I mean to us like 1500 bucks really for your kidney. But like to them it's, it's a lot.
China relied on executed prisoners as the main source for organ transplantation
So yeah, yeah, let's transition to the involuntary side of things. And this is a very dark part of things. And I'm going to focus specifically on China because they, man they do, they are, they are not awesome like at human rights at all. So. China relied on executed prisoners as the main source for organ transplantation. 95% of all organ transplant recipients in China received the organs of a condemned person.
>> Taylor: Wait, this reminds me. This, that stupid show Scream Queens, which is actually kind of fun, but it was like dumb. But there was like one John Stables was in it and he got like a hand from a murderer and he had like a murderer and that was kind of fun. And it murdered people.
>> Farz: I think that is actually how Chucky came to exist. If we go back in the mythology of Chucky, it was an executed man whose powers were kind conveyed to the doll. So fun fact for you from Chuck Chucky Trivia.
>> Taylor: Unintended consequences.
>> Farz: So shocking. Not shocking to anybody. Nobody knows in reality if any of these people who are condemned gave their consent to have their organs taken.
>> Taylor: Yeah, well, it's like bodies. We talk about bodies last time. Yeah, body show. And it's like mostly, yeah, these people.
>> Farz: So about 2 to 8,000 people are executed on the official books in China annually. We actually don't know the exact amount of people that are executed. Well, this is like the rough approximation. And also it's worth noting that in a lot of this stuff that I'm talking about, there is no precise figures because all this, everything is done underground and shady. Like, like so you know, this is.
>> Taylor: It's illegal. So it's not like they're keeping nice books.
>> Farz: Yes.
>> Taylor: Showing people.
>> Farz: Right, exactly. One group who became particularly susceptible to government abuse in China are the practitioners of a religious movement called Fallon Gong. This is a religious and spiritual movement started in 1990 by a guy named Lee Hongzi who positioned himself basically as like a Jesus like figure. If you actually look up their logo, it's literally just like a bunch of swastikas because like that was the biggest symbol for like Dharma or peace or something. In practice, this thing basically functions as a religion. It literally made me think of every like 22 year old white girl in Austin with dreadlocks who worships crystals. Like I was like, I was like, I know this person. Like they, they don't believe in God necessarily, but they definitely are like, I'm communing with nature and the spirits. Like, you know, like, it's like that kind of a thing. Yeah, yeah, it's more woo woo religion, not Helen Brimstone religion. So regardless, this movement grew to eventually be hundreds of millions of practitioners over the years. And obviously the Chinese Communist Party hates anything that is associated with faith and religion because it seems to be the only thing that authoritarian governments can't seem to stand and because they can't overcome it for some reason.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: So they just found ways to kind of punish them. In 2006, a report was conducted by Canadian Secretary of State, a guy named David Kilgore and human rights lawyer in Canada as well, named David Mattis. They concluded that approximately 41,000 organ transplants between 2000 and 2005 were sourced from Falun Gong political prisoners.
>> Taylor: Whoa.
>> Farz: From the 1990s until this report came out. So in 2006, apparently China and Australia had this like medical goodwill Exchange program where Chinese doctors would go to Australia and get trained up by their doctors on the latest and greatest on medical or organ transplantation.
>> Taylor: Quick question.
>> Farz: Yes.
>> Taylor: Are we talking in this, in this Falun Gong, folks? Both like, I'm going to take your candy, but you're still going to live and I'm going to take your lungs.
>> Farz: Yeah, both. And yeah, so there's, we can go into anecdotal stories. There are stories of people who have been released from these camps eventually and they showed up in the US they got exiled to the. Not exile. Like they got whatever status, some status in the US and they would go through medical examinations and they would learn that they were missing a kidney and part of their liver. They didn't know because they were like just put to sleep and then they woke up and like, what's going on?
>> Taylor: Like, oh my God.
>> Farz: But, but there's also so many stories of like group murders, group rapes, group. Like it is, it is a gnarly, it sounds very, very gnarly and graphic. So, yeah, there's probably a lot of folks had their everything taken. There was one guy who I mentioned this a little bit earlier about the skin thing where he, this doctor reported that he was in one of these camps. He was in the US or in Europe at this point, but he reported that he was working one of these camps and they brought them a prisoner who they thought was dead and they told him to start removing his skin for transplantation. And then he realized the guy was alive.
>> Taylor: Oh, I hate that so much.
>> Farz: Yep, yep, Yep. So in 2006, Australia decided that they're going to stop training Chinese doctors for organ transplantation and updates the procedure because they were like, we don't know where you're getting your bodies from.
>> Taylor: Right.
>> Farz: This isn't ethical. We can't ethically support you. Also, it's worth noting that like I said, like a lot of this conjecture, there were some things that in this report that came out in 2006 that started kind of aligning that looked like it was way more than just a coincidence. What ended up happening was that the researchers found that organ transplants were becoming incredibly frequent to the point where there was zero wait time in China for organs. At the same time that Falun Gong practitioners were also being increasingly thrown into these like off site, black site kind of concentration campus.
>> Taylor: Right. Like a suspicious coincidence.
>> Farz: Yeah, it's like, it's weird that these two things coincide with one another. And they already knew that. The vast majority, 95%, as I stated earlier, of Organs were being transplanted anyways in China were coming from condemned people though. And none of this was really that unusual because prior to Falun Gong drawing the eye of the government, the Uyghurs got a trial run of what it was like to be subjected to Chinese government abuse. They were also used for forced organ transplant donations. And in some ways this is almost grosser than what they ended up doing to the Falun Gong people.
>> Taylor: Wait, who are the Uyghurs?
>> Farz: So I'm going to go into that. So the Uyghurs are a Muslim minority within China. If you look up picture of them, they look like. They look like Tibetan people basically like they're like that. Visually they are different looking and from a spiritual perspective they're dramatically different because again we're communist China. Atheism rules reigns supreme. They can't tolerate the Muslim community here. The reason why I say it's a little bit grosser is that the Muslim. So people like I mentioned in Saudi Arabia, UAE and the Gulf states, obviously those are Muslims, they prefer the organs of Uyghurs because that is halal, that is coming from a Muslim person. It is more pure in spirit than if it was come from anybody else. And so a lot of folks focus specifically on doing transplantations in China because they knew they had this weaker population that was in concentration camps they could force into organ harvesting.
>> Taylor: Jesus.
Iran is the only country in the world that legally permits a donor to sell organs
>> Farz: Yeah, gnarly. I'm going to leave it there and pivot to also I will say this once more time. I like we talked about this before Taylor where I was like I'm not going to get on TikTok. It's a Chinese thing and I don't want to give them more, more stuff like these stories about what the government there does is like that's today. That is not, I know, 1940s or.
>> Taylor: I know I'm looking at this like I've never even heard of the Uyghurs, everyone. It's why it's u y g H u R and I. There's just so much bad stuff happening in the world that I don't even know about.
>> Farz: There's a New York Times, I mean I was still living in LA when this happened but the New York Times, when news of this became like more obvious to people, they did a really, really great multi part series in the daily podcast of the Uyghurs and what they're going through and they're still going through it. It's just like now you have the Falun Gong and them and so the next me, the Next. Like, like, these are not great people.
>> Taylor: Yeah, it's not good if, I mean, if you're harvesting humans. I don't know, Fear. Figure something out.
>> Farz: And, and with your God. One thing I didn't, one thing I didn't touch on was the Mexican cartels also do this and a lot of folks who end up going into Mexico end up getting disappeared. The conjecture has been that they are being trafficked through human organ force donations and transplants. So that is a common thing as well. Those typically seem to mostly be alive donations or harvesting. But I did listen to a doctor say that he did harvest someone's lungs who was not a voluntary donor to be transplanted. So. Yeah, be careful, Be careful.
>> Taylor: I need to like, hold my face up because I'm going to get frown lines from the frowning that I'm doing during this episode.
>> Farz: Lots of frowns. Yeah. Nobody's happy about it. But I'm going to ask you this. Where on earth do you think you can do this legally? Sell your organs?
>> Taylor: Japan?
>> Farz: Iran.
>> Taylor: Oh, okay.
>> Farz: Yeah. So Iran is the only country in the world that legally permits a donor to sell their organs. But there are some limitations. Foreigners cannot come to Iran to buy organs, so you can't be an American or British national and fly in to get the organ. Also you have to be the same nationality of the person whose organs you're receiving. That is, you have to be Iranian. So I am actually in. I'm good.
>> Taylor: That's good. Great. If you ever need something, you can just.
>> Farz: Thank you.
>> Taylor: Hop on over there.
>> Farz: This one's the best part about this whole process. I think there can be no intermediaries in the transaction.
>> Taylor: That is good because that's where all the money goes.
>> Farz: That's where all the money goes. There is some national kidney foundation that facilitates matches and runs the transactions, but it has to be done legally and without someone. Between the transaction. The government itself will compensate the donor directly to the tune of about twelve hundred dollars. The recipient of the organ will generally compensate the donor additionally to the tune of 40. $500 to $8000.
>> Taylor: Okay.
>> Farz: The donor will receive free health care. The donor then also gets priority in hiring within public sector jobs. So they've kind of normalized it a little bit.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Which makes sense too, because some of the stats I read with organ donations in Iran is that it is. It was seen as something that is, I don't know, like anti God's wishes or something, you know, like, like whatever. Like that, that mentality. And so that's why they started doing this this paid donation thing because nobody was donating their organs, and they had the worst wait list. Now, Iran literally has. Doesn't have the concept of a wait list for organs because people are just like, yeah, okay, I'll get a better job. I'll get free health care. I'll get some money. I'll help. Also, also, there's something about, like, helping someone that, like, is like, you, like, looks like you is from the same nationality in the same religion as you. And I think it's easier for people to get over, like, that hurdle of, like, giving. Giving, giving this away. But.
>> Taylor: Well, yeah, like, they've normalized it.
>> Farz: They normalized it. But that being said, again, the same problems that persists elsewhere persist here. Who's going to donate their organs for money? A poor person. 70% of the people. Ben, it's like always, men who donate their organs in Iran for money are doing it because they live under the poverty line.
>> Taylor: So do they actually get jobs?
>> Farz: They do get jobs. Yeah. Yeah. So it sounds like, like, this is, you know, it's kind of like, say, the opposite of our prison system. Like, you send someone in and it's like, well, they're gonna come out and be great, right? It's like, Right. No, but in this case, it's like you're gonna send them in and, like, they actually do get a leg up. It seems like the job thing takes a priority in people's logic and their decision making over the money they get directly.
>> Taylor: I mean, that sounds good, but if you're.
>> Farz: If you're super poor and you have no options, you know, you walk away with, let's say, nine, ten grand in a country where that's a ton of money and you're gonna get a good job with benefits. Like, okay.
It gives you, like, a legit leg up. Like what? At what cost?
It gives you, like, a legit leg up. It's almost like the GI Bill was to boomers here.
>> Taylor: Like, yeah, yeah. Like what? At what cost? Like, you're doing something dangerous, but you're getting something.
>> Farz: Exactly, exactly. But kind of like we said, a lot of the.
This all came about because of the bodies exhibit, says Futurama
Under the miscellaneous side of this, this all came about because of the bodies exhibit. Because me and Rachel were talking about the bodies exhibit. If you go to that. Yeah. A big chunk of those people were political prisoners that were probably killed for money for, like, for the benefit of the party.
>> Taylor: Did they. Did we always know that? Like, what. Who did we think that they were?
>> Farz: I don't know if we always.
>> Taylor: 20 years ago.
>> Farz: I don't know if we always knew that. Yeah, I'm not.
>> Taylor: Because I remember it in when I went to Germany in 2000. So 25 years ago they had it there. And it's called Korperfelt, which is Body World. And that was the first time I ever saw it. But I don't know like who I assumed they were.
>> Farz: So the, there's something really powerful about like the power of denial and like.
>> Taylor: I guess I never asked. I don't know.
>> Farz: Yeah, well it's not that. It's like China, China was like never been transparent about this stuff because they know that it would result in global outrage. When I mentioned the Australians cutting off China like it was, it wasn't because they had some personal vendetta against Chinese doctors. It was because they were like, y' all will not provide valid evidence that the people whose organs you are taking have consented to this.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: And until you do that, we can't, we can't. It doesn't mean that they don't have the consent, they're just not being transparent about it. But like likely it's because they don't have the consent. So that's probably the same situation here where like people started going to it and seeing the bodies exhibit and first off you're in wonderment so you're going to ask limited questions anyways and then when you do ask questions it's like eh, yeah, we got it. It's like okay, well conversation stops there.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: But again the evidence of this is more than coincidence. Like it can't just be explained away by coincidence.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: So. So that is my two part series miniseries I will call it. And yeah, I would advocate people go watch some documentaries about this stuff because. And they will have the guys lift their shirts up and show their kidney scars. And it is. And on the flip side of it, you look at the people who go into these countries and do these things and this is one of those stories where you really can't be mad at anybody except for the systems that force them to interact with each other, like the brokers or the policies. I don't blame the poor guy for selling his organ because he doesn't know any better and he just wants the money. And I don't blame the old guy who goes to a country and gets an organ because he's on a ten year wait list. He also wants to see his kids get married and have kids. Like, you know, I mean like, like he's a bad person in this situation.
>> Taylor: Like do you think it was worth it to have invented organ transplants?
>> Farz: Yeah. Yeah.
>> Taylor: Even though there's all this happening in like the black market.
>> Farz: Yeah, I think, I think that the way that Spain did it, as I mentioned yesterday, like, they solved so much of the problems by having an opt out system instead of an opt in system and also normalizing it. Like with Iran, like, they didn't. It was taboo. It wasn't until the 1980s that they decided to actually address this, but it was taboo to give your organs to someone else. And so a lot of people died because it was just culturally not acceptable. And I think that if the governments and non profits want to make a concerted effort to normalize this, they could.
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah, I agree.
>> Farz: Or until AI gets to the point where it can generate organs, I don't know. I mean, it's likely that that will happen faster than governments getting together.
>> Taylor: But why are we even still confined to these human bodies?
>> Farz: Yeah, this is your. Yeah, we're. We're heading towards a dangerous world here.
>> Taylor: We just ahead like in Futurama.
>> Farz: That was funny. You actually need the head. You just need the brain.
>> Taylor: That's true. That's true. That's true. Cool. Thank you. Super interesting. I hope I never need one, but if I do, I'm gonna be on a waitlist and it's gonna suck.
>> Farz: I'll take you to Iran. I'll teach you Farsi.
>> Taylor: Thank you. That's very kind of you. That would work. But I appreciate you trying.
>> Farz: Yeah. Hopefully y' all enjoyed the story. If you did, let us know. If you didn't, let us know. We prefer, you know, we prefer we like nice messages, but we don't learn from nice messages. We learn from terrible ones. So feel free to write to us and let us know what you want to see different or hear different.
>> Taylor: It's just a little bit of both. It can be a. I have ideas.
>> Farz: Be nice to Taylor. Just tell me what you think.
>> Taylor: Sounds mean. Yeah, please and thank you.
Taylor: Mostly cheese pizzas sound awesome. I feel like other places it's like mostly sauce
I got some other ideas from folks and then I wanted to tell you far is that Morgan texted me today that her friend got married at the Austin library. And she said it was lovely and the bar is really great and you have to go.
>> Farz: That is very cool. And of course people get married there. It makes total sense.
>> Taylor: Totally. So definitely check that out because it sounds awesome. We'll go next time I come to Austin.
>> Farz: Yeah. Sweet. Do we have anything else to read out?
>> Taylor: I just wanted to also tell you that my mom and my brother hiked Mount Vesuvius today. They're in Pompeii, which is so fun. And I've done that before. I did it like 25 years ago also as well. But very, very fun that they're in Pompeii.
>> Farz: One of those, like flat, mostly cheese pizzas when you get to the bottom, along with like a beer. Sounds awesome.
>> Taylor: I just like, I was talking to someone at work yesterday about it and we were like describing individual pizzas. We ate at different restaurants in Italy 20 years ago because we like remember them so perfectly because they were so good.
>> Farz: Is it. Sorry, is it mostly cheese or is it mostly sauce? Mostly sauce. I think I got that backwards.
>> Taylor: No, it's, it's. There's. It's sauce and cheese. I think it's like what you'd expect. I feel like other places it's like mostly sauce. Like I was in. When I was in Germany 25 years ago, someone got a pizza that was just sauce and hard boiled eggs. And I was like, the war's over.
>> Farz: We don't have to eat like this.
>> Taylor: What is wrong with you? Like what? What? Go to the doctor. This is crazy. So, yes, thank you everyone. And we are available. Doomed to fell pod on all socials. Doomtopodmail.com Send us an email.
>> Farz: Nice or mean.
>> Taylor: But I mean mostly nice. Seems. I'll take constructive criticism, but don't like yell at me.
>> Farz: Please don't yell at Taylor.
>> Taylor: There's no reason to do that.
>> Farz: Sweet. We'll go ahead and cut things off. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Taylor.