Mo Money, Mo Problems

When you hear the name Bernie Madoff, three things immediately come to your mind. The first is usually some curse word, the second is money, and the third is Jewish. Unfortunately, there is no denying that Madoff will always be inexplicably connected to his Jewish heritage. The Ponzi scheming schmuck fits into the age-old Jewish stereotype and every newspaper in the country took advantage of that. When Mike Bloomberg, the 8^th richest person in America, donated the most money to charity this year (more than Bill Gates and Warren Buffet), no one mentioned his ancestry. And so it came as no surprise to me that the first thing I learned about Nick Rosen was that he’s Israeli.

I always thought there were two ways to get an organ. The first way is the tried and tested, more established route in that you wait for someone to die and then you take their organ. The second way, a living-donor organ, seems to be the preferred direction of most doctors since it involves less wait time. But recently, I’ve found out there is another approach one can take, although it might be more sheisty and sleazy. This is the road that Nick Rosen took.

Nick Rosen wanted to change around his life and when he saw an ad in the paper for someone looking for a kidney, he thought he found his chance. He called the number on the ad and told them his blood type, hoping that he could help in anyway possible. Soon Rosen found out, though, that his donation did not need to be altruistic. Rosen was offered 20,000 dollars for his kidney, flown to NY, and had the operation.

This third option, buying an organ, will cost you around 150 thousand dollars for a kidney. That’s like 15 houses in Detroit. I can’t even imagine how much a liver would cost, not that I would be interested (unless everyone wants to split it with me). What bothers me the most about this course of action is who is involved. The article sums it up pretty nicely, saying, “The donors and patients in this network were linked by one common theme -- they were Jewish.”

This type of behavior makes the Bernie Madoff scheme less shocking. When you hear about a worldwide organ traffic network coming from Israel, it reinvigorates the stereotype. I’m suffering waiting for an organ but I could never imagine buying one. I would never be able to literally keep that inside of me for the rest of my life. And so with only two roads ahead of me then, I guess I’ll have to wait a little longer.