Investigative journalist Scott Carney spoke about the organ and skeleton market, drug testing and the unknown practices behind these businesses followed by a question-and-answer session and book signing last Wednesday. Carney is the author of The Red Market: On The Trail of the World's Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers, and Child Traffickers.

The founder of the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, Florence Graves, introduced Carney, who is a senior fellow of the institute.

Carney opened his lecture by reflecting on his time as a student, when he first went to India in 1998. He learned Hindi and studied Bollywood music while writing his Ph.D. thesis. When money became sparse, he "rented [his] body" for $2,500 by enrolling in a clinical trial for the erectile dysfunction medication Levitra. He became interested in the other participants of the trial, some of whom were ex-cons who could find few jobs and others who were "professional guinea pigs," and made $60,000 a year.

Carney began to research the extent to which the pharmaceutical industry will go to get a drug tested and approved. He commented that the drug industry in the U.S. faces cost constraints. According to Carney, it costs about one billion dollars to research, test and distribute medication in the U.S., but by crossing borders, pharmaceutical companies can save an average of one-third to two-thirds of the total cost. Clinical trials in foreign countries are much less monitored than U.S. agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration.

The social side effects from drug testing are ever-increasing, said Carney. There have been several human deaths that have simply been swept under the table in the absence of government intervention, he said. Because of this, Carney argued that there should be more regulation of the drug testing industry. Carney then focused on organ donations, body harvesting and many of its societal implications. He spoke about his investigation of the red market, including the hair market, organ harvesting, surrogacy around the world, illegal adoption, egg harvesting and the skeleton market.

Carney focused greatly on the skeleton market, specifically in India. He noted that India has been the number-one distributer of human skeletons since about the 1860s and has created one of the "best skeleton processes" in the world. The dead body is placed in a river, where the fish eat off most of the flesh; the skeleton is then left in the sun to dry, leaving "nice, light bones."

Numerous companies like the India-based Young Brothers Anatomical Models sell skeletons around the world, including to medical schools in the US, usually while keeping the sources of the skeletons undisclosed.

However, anonymity is not only limited to skeletons, but also can be observed in organ harvesting and distribution. "People don't think twice where organs [or skeletons] come from," said Carney.

Carney discussed organ harvesting practices in Chinese penal systems. Carney said that it is state policy to harvest the organs of executed prisoners in China. All prisoners are blood-typed upon entering the prison system, with the exception of murderers, rapists and all inmates considered undesirable for organ donation. Political prisoners and undesirables can be executed on demand for individuals who need an organ and are willing to pay for it. Like skeleton acquisitions, all organ extractions are anonymous, said Carney.

Carney also discussed the downfalls of international adoptions, specifically the often illegal practices of those who run the orphanages. Carney said that people want to adopt healthy children, not sickly or developmentally delayed children. Orphanage owners support themselves from international adoption fees and government assistance, but if the owners have no children that people want to adopt, they will go out and kidnap young, healthy and mentally proficient children from families and put them up for adoption, thus ensuring adoptions fees. Just as in the organ market, Carney notes, people who kidnap children to profit from their adoption say that they are doing this for a good reason, in this case to keep the doors open for more orphans.

At the close of the lecture, Carney signed copies of his book with unique witticisms related to the red market.

Scott Carney is a contributing editor of WIRED magazine, and writes stories on a variety of medical, technological and ethical issues for Mother Jones magazine, National Public Radio, and National Geographic TV. He won the 2010 Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism for his story "Meet the Parents". He currently resides in Long Beach, Calif.