“Wherever there’s an Internet, people are trying to sell organs,” Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley, Nancy Scheper-Hughes said.

1954 marked the first successful kidney transplant and opened the door to a brand new advancement in medical technology, but also gave birth to a new type of crime: organ trafficking.

The shortage of an indigenous “supply” of organs has led to the development of the international organ trade, where potential recipients travel abroad to obtain organs through commercial transactions. The international organ trade has been recognized as a significant health policy issue in the international community, according to the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.

Eight-year-old Gurkiren Kaur became one of many suspicious cases involving missing organs. Kaur and her family were on vacation when visiting India when Kaur developed some signs of mild dehydration. Kaur’s parents took her to a local clinic where she was given an injection by doctors and later passed away. Kaur’s parents allowed the Indian clinic to perform a biopsy on their daughter in order to find the cause of death. Back home in the U.K a second biopsy was supposed to be taken underway until officials found that  Kaur was missing organs.     Where these organs are now is not known.

However, organizations have been created to counteract the rise in reported organ thefts.

Scheper-Hughes is also co-founder and Director of “Organs Watch.” This was created as a medical human rights organization and is used in order to research the human organ trafficking that occurs around the world.

“Her most recent research is a multi-sited ethnographic study of the global traffic in humans for their organs which she interprets as a form of invisible and sacrificial violence,” according to the University of California-Berkeley website.

“If the organ market would be regulated by possibly paying people for their organs it would be a lot safer than people selling their organs on the black market,” senior Mara Hernandez said.