A popular traveler’s legend about a backpacker waking up after a night on the town in a foreign city. Only two days are missing from his calendar and a surgical scar marks where criminal doctors stole his kidney. This tale has been floating around the world since 1991. I’ve heard it in China, Thailand, Europe, and the USA. None having seen the victim failed to lessen the strength of the legend, which took on new life when a Thai woman claimed her right kidney had been stolen during an operation at the Bangkok Hospital in Phra Pradaeng in 2005.
The Thai Medical Council took the woman’s claim seriously and subjected her to an MRI scan which showed her vital organ in place, but unusually small. Doctors attributed the pygmyism of her kidney to birth and that she is suffering kidney failure requiring instant treatment. Eight months later a private hospital in the Thon Buri area treated her for endometriosis and her health went south.
”My health has been perfectly fine during the past 40 years. But it has been deteriorating since I underwent surgery. I need a better explanation of why my kidney is damaged.”
The woman is still not convinced by the doctors’ assessment and has requested a full check-out by the Medical Council.
People’s low esteem of hospitals has helped propagate the legend, which some rumor specialists attribute to a 1989 news item from Turkey. Two brothers claimed to have had their kidneys stolen. In fact they had sold their kidneys and were unhappy with the price. They called the police thinking the hospital would settle for damages and instead were sentenced to jail for blackmail.
See this url
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/robbery/kidney.asp
The going rate for a healthy kidney is $40-80,000 in the USA. Even more in Switzerland, because they put chocolates on the pillows of hospital beds.
My kidney is worth about $5 and that’s for the good one.
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