Organ theft narratives

Western Folklore, Winter 1997 by Veronique Campion-Vincent

3. Stolen Kidney. Another popular organ-theft narrative is that of the "Kidney Heist" (Brunvand 1993). The stories, that first appeared in Europe in 1990, told of the misfortune having occurred to a careless tourist or business traveller to a foreign land where he falls under the control of a kidnapper or a seductive woman only to awaken the next day to discover that one kidney has been removed. Often the elegantly sutured scar on the victim's back testifies to the intervention by highly trained physicians. The story first surfaced in the German press in the summer of 1990. The first occurrence, printed in the tabloid Bild der frau, in September 1990 told of the misfortune of a married couple in Istanbul, where the husband fell victim to the ploy, and included a photograph of the unfortunate pair. The Turks were quick to deny the story and a reporter from the Milliyet checked and found no complaints had been filed with the Turkish police nor with the German Consulate in Istanbul (Milliyet 9 October 1990). The rapid spread of the story in Germany caused concern and alarm, and official warnings were issued to tourists. Brednich (1991), for example, mentioned that a German blood donors' association advised tourists going abroad not to take along their blood group card, so as to make the job of the kidney thieves more difficult.

Variants of this "Kidney Heist" narrative appeared at this same time in Australia where it was reported that Australian tourists fell victim to the "kidneynappers" in Los Angeles, California, a favorite destination for Australian tourists (Moravec 1993).

It was not long before variants of the "Kidney Heist" were reported from places around the world. In a Swedish tale, a young tourist couple innocently signed up on a Brazilian beach for what they believed to be a "Save the Rain Forest" appeal. It was presented to them by an honest-looking young boy, but as it turned out, was actually a donor's consent form, as the pair discovered when they, after having been kidnapped, woke up on operating tables. Bengt af Klintberg heard the story from a girl studying engineering after a lecture he gave in Lerum, Sweden on 21 October 1992. The girl had "heard it from a friend" (Klintberg, personal communication 1992).

Another variant was told by physicians in England as a "cautionary tale," and appeared in the Observer 4 December 1994. When a young female tourist was stricken in India with an acute appendicitis, she had no choice but to give her consent to undergo emergency surgery. All appeared to go well, but when she was back in England, she once again suffered from the symptoms of an appendicitis. The physicians who examined her discovered that it was not the appendix that had been removed, but her kidney.

Brunvand (1993) had noted the "Kidney Heist" story as early as 1991, but the site of the theft was not an exotic foreign land but rather an American big city, where the victim had gone on business travel and was misled by the typical seductive blonde. Later versions from northern Europe also set the story, not in far-away places such as India or Brazil but rather, for example, in Paris.