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Abstract

In 2011 Scott Carney, anthropologist and investigative journalist, introduced the public to the horrifying underworld of the Red Market, the illegal trade of human materials. Carney’s book The Red Market: On the Trail of the World’s Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers, and Child Traffickers (2011) deduces through ethnographic experiences that “[r]ed markets are the product of contradictions, aris[ing] when social taboos surrounding the human body collide with the individual urge to live a long, happy life” (5). The web behind this twisted niche of the black market is expansive and has a hold in many countries worldwide including the United States, China, and India. A closer analytical look at these countries and the type of illegal trade that occurs within them sheds light on how the Red Market thrives, unregulated and unmonitored by both national and international organizations. Fueled by human resilience and the desire to live, the red market is run by body brokers who prey on minority populations, profiting on exploitation, human rights violations, and our basic need for survival. This paper explores the existing literature on cultural ideologies of the body, scholarly studies on the role of corruption in government and healthcare institutions, and the areas where a general lack of regulations have allowed the intricacies of the red market forge and flourish without opposition.

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