Book contents
1 - Introduction
from BLACK MARKETS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 September 2019
Summary
A. A Tale of Two Cities
The politicians can have our organs, but they can't give us jobs.
(Mr. Giles)All week long, we've been trying to get someone to pay attention to this (beating), and nobody wanted to hear it … The police have not been cooperating with us. They haven't been investigating. All of a sudden, they want to speak.
(Yvonne Lucas)There is a book of rules that controls the placement of organs and the rules under which they're transferred from donors to recipients, and I said I want to be sure, and you've gotta assure me now, each one of you that those rules are gonna be followed to the letter, – and they were.
(Robert Casey, former governor of Pennsylvania)It was a Sunday night, June 6, 1993, when Mrs. Frances Lucas discovered her semiconscious son. William Michael Lucas, 34, had sustained an unmerciful beating. Covered in a pool of blood, Michael had somehow managed to struggle from the front door to his mother's kitchen floor. Despite his urgent medical condition, police and ambulance were slow to respond. One lone officer finally arrived, but would not call for an ambulance to the home. So Mrs. Lucas dragged her son into her car, placing him as gently as she could in the backseat and drove off to the hospital. One week later, two very different men would be fighting for their lives. Michael would lose, but the Governor, Robert Casey (Pennsylvania), would survive with a pair of new organs.
Days after his brutal beating and shortly after being declared brain dead, Michael's heart and liver were delicately inserted into the waiting caverns of Governor Casey who was dying from amyloidosis. Michael was the “wrong guy” caught in a vicious cycle. Michael Lucas was a victim of mistaken identity, bludgeoned by a drug gang that “beat up the wrong man.” Local police described the attackers as a fleet of gang members from Pittsburgh who swarmed into this small Monessen town looking for trouble. Beaten by life, unemployed, but searching for work, Michael was the second of two sons to die violently. Most of his attackers were never found. Michael's forgotten contribution to the state of Pennsylvania was saving the life of Governor Casey.
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- Black MarketsThe Supply and Demand of Body Parts, pp. 1 - 24Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006