How Much Is That Baby in the Window? A Q&A with Scott Carney, Author of ‘Red Market’

Another day, another horrific news story out of China: Apparently, unsavory folks in the People’s Republic are turning dead babies—aborted fetuses and stillborn infants, mostly—into powder and pills, to be sold to… I don’t know. Crazy people in South Korea? Says the always trustworthy Daily Mail:

The South Korean Customs Service said today that it had heightened its searches of suspicious packages being brought into the country by travellers from China in an attempt to stamp out the sickening trade.

According to customs agents, 35 smuggling attempts have been made since August last year involving more than 17,000 capsules disguised as ‘stamina boosters’.

Curious about the subject, I turned for insight to my friend Scott Carney, whose recent book, Red Market, explores in depth the international trade in human body parts (and human beings).

What do you know about these Chinese baby pills?

Only what I’ve read in that article. There have been stories out there for years that the Chinese use human body parts in their medicine, but not a lot of grounded facts. And the story raised more questions than it answered.

Such as?

First of all: how do we know the pills are human in origin? How do we know they were from babies? As far as I know there is no sceintific test that would affirm a child who was turned into a powder.

They border guards found something, but who is to know for sure what.

It reminds me of the Peruvian fat smugglers. There was a report that people were being killed for their fat and then the fat was being sold to a Russian beauty product company. The BBC reported on it, as did many other news sources.

It turned out to be a hoax. The police were trying to cover up corruption allegations with a fantastical smuggling story losely based on fight club.

That’s always been my strategy for avoiding trouble, too.

I think it was the plot for the last season of “The Wire” as well

Another question is this: there were 17,500 pills found. how many babies is that?

That was my next question.

One? Two at the max? It depends on what part of the baby you are using. I’m guessing that if you used the whole child then it would be not very many. So that raises the question of why bother smuggling in the first place? You can kidnap and kill a single child in china with much less risk than killing one abroad and smuggling it in. The whole story just doesn’t add up.

How about this: You know body-part smugglers as well as anyone. If you were going to turn babies into powder, how would you do it? Would you turn the whole kid into powder, or would it be better to have baby-kidney powder, baby-liver powder, baby-heart powder? “Better” meaning “more profitable.”

Well, if I were really savvy, I would use an inert substance. Or a dog. Who is to know if it was a real baby? Who is going to complain?

You mean there’s no trust among body-part smugglers?

The more I think about it the less the story actually makes sense. The markets that I’ve looked at the body parts were always discernable. IE: a kidney moving across borders, a human egg, a bone etc. When you actually grind something into powder it’s actual humanness seems to matter less.

That said, it is technically possible. And there are a lot of weirdos out there.

Isn’t that what they do with rhino horns, though?

Rhinos are harder to come by than babies.

Though, there are a lot of magical markets for human body parts. Think about the albinos in parts of africa that are killed to be eaten. There is a fairly robust trade in albino genitals as I understand it.

Oh really?

Yeah.

What do albino genitals cost?

Good question. How much do you have?

I’m a writer—not much.

We can talk once you get paid.

How about this: Is my child more valuable live and intact, divided into transplantable organs, or ground to a powder? She is 3 and a half years old, and weighs about 35 pounds, depending on whether she’s pooped recently.

How many milligrams is she?

About 16 million milligrams, or 16 kg.

What is 40% of 16 kg? That would be her dry weight.

6.4 kg

So that is the mass that you would have to make powder out of. Let’s say your pills were 500 mg each.

That’s 12,800 pills.

Ah, so the border guards got approximately 1.5 babies, if they were being legit.

Did they say what the street value of the pills was?

The article didn’t say. It also didn’t give mgs.

Well, 500mg is a good guess.

I bet you would make more selling her on the adoption market

What would she go for? Mixed white-Asian baby, great health, 3.5 yrs old.

At least $50,000.

Are some national baby markets better than others?

The US and Europe will get you the most cash. But also the most red tape.

What about if we sold her off organ by organ?

That would be difficult to do in America, since most doctors would not be into it unless she was brain dead. But in Brazil it happens. So the question is, what does a Brazilian organ transplant cost? Then figure you would get about 10% of that, at the very best.

It’s probably better to be in the kidnapping business there so you can fulfil bulk orders.

However, if you found a person in America whose child was dying of organ failure, and your kid was a match, then you would have some real bargaining power. Possibly millions.

Wow. So, in a perfect scenario, I’d find dying American kids who needed each and every one of Sasha’s organs.

The plan would be to fly you and the kid to another country and have the operation in, say, Sao Paolo. It would come down to a function of what the buyers were willing to pay. There is no set price for organs. The real question is what is that child’s life worth to their parents? If Sasha was dying of liver failure, how much would you pay to save her (assuming you weren’t troubled by the ethics)?

Pretty much everything, obviously. Historically, what have parents paid for such things?

Sadly they generally don’t report the buying price to me. I keep asking the organ brokers to file annual reports but they never comply.

I understand: paperwork. Yeesh.

Child organs are a niche market. And their value is a function of the parent’s willingness to pay and their means.

A niche market that is more lucrative than the adult one, or less?

Yeah, definitely. A child skeleton sells for 2 – 3 times an adult skeleton. For a great child skeleton, it might go for $10,000. Maybe $15,000.

Wow.

But that would be the top end. On the low end, maybe $4,500 on the current U.S. market. So you would be better to sell her whole than in powder.

My guess is that if the Korea story is legit that they procured the child for $0. By just taking a body from a morgue or killing one. Maybe a $100 bribe was paid somewhere.

Okay, so if I wanted to maximize Sasha’s value, I would:

Sell her piecemeal.

Start with her hair.

Then harvest some skin and her corneas.

Go for the internal organs.

Keep her alive as long as possible.

But first find buyers.

Finally reduce her to bones and sell those.

Her marrow might be valuable as well.

I wonder if it would be possible to make her start producing human eggs with the right hormones. It probably wouldn’t be good for her. But it might be possible.

And everything else we turn to powder? And turn the powder into pills?

Sure. But the powder is going to have low margins.

True, but we’re talking about the leftovers. What else are you going to do with that stuff?

Besides, you’ve sold almost everything else. I figure you’d want to get rid of the evidence somehow. So if you’re setup to make powder then go for it. But it would be a pain to sell it. You might have to travel to China. Or at least Chinatown.

A Book Is to Love: Maurice Sendak, 1928–2012

I spend a lot of time trying to understand just what is going on in my daughter Sasha’s head. She’s nearly 3 and a half now, and while she can be quite articulate, that doesn’t mean her stories and commentary make any kind of sense. She conflates yesterday and today, she rides elephants, she is pursued by mothers and by monsters. There’s a baby brother in her belly and one day it’s going to pop right out! Her birthday is today, it was a long time ago, it’s coming up next. To play with her—to play with most young children, really—is difficult, because she’s following a line of logic that has become foreign to me. What exactly are we hiding from under this blanket? What am I supposed to know about baby jaguars? And how can I participate in this game in a way that feels natural to us both?

Sasha’s language—the words and thoughts of an imaginative child—is the language that Maurice Sendak, who died today, never forgot. To read his books is to immerse yourself in the imagination not of an adult trying to guess what kids like, but of someone who speaks like them, writes like them, thinks like them.

“Where the Wild Things Are” is, of course, the one that everyone cites, because its narrative flow most closely mimics that of a kid’s story. When Max goes off in his boat “through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year,” that’s a child’s sense of time. He cows the Wild Things by staring them in the eyes—a child’s trick that seems impossible. And while the Wild Rumpus seems like a kid’s fantasy comes true, it’s the sudden shift afterwards, when Max decides he needs to return home, that rings most true. Kids are moody, their unfathomable ecstasy followed by bottomless longing.

That said, “Where the Wild Things Are” was never a favorite of mine, or of Sasha’s. Lately, we’ve been reading the Nutshell Library, and in particular “Pierre,” whose beautiful refrain—”I don’t care!”—Sasha voices while I read the parents’ (and lion’s) lines. “They pulled the lion by the hair, they hit him with the folding chair. His mother asked, ‘Where is Pierre?’ The lion answered, ‘I don’t care!’ His father said, ‘Pierre’s in there!'” God, it’s brilliant—that driving rhythm, the specificity of the folding chair, the insistent rhyme. And it has chapters! To hear Sasha say, “Chapter 2,” as we turn that page is pretty neat. Her first chapter book, and she can hold it in the palm of her hand.

My other favorite is A Hole Is to Dig, which Sendak illustrated but did not write. In fact, its putative author, Ruth Krauss, didn’t exactly write it either. Rather, she got its lines from actual children, whom she asked for definitions of regular things: “A face,” they told her, “is so you can make faces.” More:

  • A hand is to hold up when you want your turn
  • Grass it to have on the ground with dirt under it and clover in it
  • Mashed potatoes are to give everybody enough

And all around these lines—dancing, digging, making faces, and holding up their hands—are Sendak’s children, making sense of the world as best they can. Let’s hope the man himself is now in a place where there’s mashed potatoes a-plenty, and everyone understands how he thinks.

Adventure Time With Matt and Sasha

Trying to understand why your child likes a particular TV show, movie, or fairy-tale character is usually a losing proposition. Baby Einstein? Fine if you’re stoned, I guess. Elmo? Daddy doesn’t get it. Dora? <Blink, blink.>

Most of the time, this is not a big problem. The TV, after all, is our blessed electronic baby-sitter, and while Sasha watches it, I’m often making dinner, reading the New Yorker, having a beer, or otherwise keeping my adult self entertained. Sometimes, though, I really want to know what she’s watching, not out of some supervisory parental obligation but because I want to share her cultural references and make sure she’s growing up with good taste. Or at least my tastes.

Unfortunately, for a while Sasha was obsessed with “Datou Erzi, Xiaotou Baba,” a monumentally stupid cartoon produced in mainland China in, I’m guessing, the late 1970s or early 1980s. It is, as its name suggests, about a child with a big head and his small-headed father. And as that name equally suggests, it’s incredibly stupid, and strange without being intriguingly weird. In the clip below, you’ll see what happens when normal-headed mom finally walks out on the idiotic men she’s been condemned to support. (It’s much more entertaining, I think, if you don’t speak Chinese.)

God, for months Sasha loved this show, which her preschool teachers had introduced her to. But I couldn’t stand it—couldn’t, wouldn’t try to follow it. Eventually, though, she outgrew it, and went on to other things: the Chinese version of “Winnie the Pooh and Tigger,” Bubble Guppies, and, bizarrely, Before Green Gables, an animated series about Anne’s rural life that happens to be in Japanese. (We still don’t know how much Sasha understands of it, but she loves it.) These were all improvements over “Big Head, Little Head,” but just the same I couldn’t get into them. They were shows for her, not me.

Until recently. One evening, flipping through the channels, we stumbled on Adventure Time, a half-hour Cartoon Network series about Finn, a kid in a hoodie, and his magical dog, Jake, who’s apparently modeled on Bill Murray’s character in Meatballs. The show is nutzo! And in the best way possible. In last night’s episode, for example, the lewd Ice King tries to seduce two “Breakfast Princesses,” whereupon Finn and Jake interrupt and ground him. In revenge, the Ice King hires a hitman, Scorcher, to off the heroes, and the whole thing ends with the Ice King freezing Finn and Jake in blocks of ice, sitting atop them, and gloating, “You’re grounded—under my butt!”

This is weird shit, the kind I love. As Sasha and I watched Scorcher trying to slay Finn and Jake, I thought back to the old Transformers and GI Joe series, in which no one ever died, and indeed the prospect of death never came into play. Even when I was a little kid, that struck me as strange, and I remember discovering Robotech, the Japanese series in which people—many, many people—actually died, with a kind of joy. The fact that Adventure Time would bring up this possibility so nonchalantly—and so joyously weirdly—was impressive.

Plus: butt jokes!

Anyway, Sasha likes it, and we’ve finally found a show to watch together. Even Jean giggled at the butt jokes. Now, if only we can find it in Chinese…

How Are We Wrecking Our Second Child Today?

Pfffffft.

We at DadWagon write against the clock, knowing that one day—maybe a few years from now, maybe just a few months—our kids will realize what we’re doing and ask us to stop. Soon after that, they’ll probably learn how to Google their own names and ours, and then we’ll really be screwed.

This post is one of the ones that will get me in trouble.

So, yesterday morning Jean and I went in for her 20-week anatomy scan. You remember, the one where they do an in-depth ultrasound to examine all the parts of the baby, and reveal its sex? Well, actually, I didn’t remember this at all, and when I pointed out to Jean she reminded me that I wasn’t around for it—I was wandering around Europe that summer. Oh, right.

Anyway, the scan went fine—ten fingers, nose where it should be, heart thumping away—and so then we did (or Jean did) amniocentesis. This was definitely new. Last time around, we were under 35; now we’re over. But it took some deciding on whether to do it. Jean and I are both in good health, with no family histories of birth defects, and the tests so far have indicated no problems (or 90–95% chance of no problems). So there was no real reason to do it other than peace of mind—and the fact that everyone around us was encouraging us to take it.

So we did. At a certain point, we shrugged our shoulders and said, Eh, whatever. Which has pretty much been our approach to the pregnancy overall. This will surprise none of you who already have multiple children, but the hope, anxiety, thrills, and concern that rollercoastered us through the first round, four years ago, have flattened out. At worst, Jean’s being pregnant is an inconvenience. At best, we forget about it entirely.

Oh, the baby’s kicking? That’s neat, I guess. That’s our attitude now. Naming the kid, too, feels less urgent than the first time around—I’m sure whatever we come up with will be fine, since we’ll just end up giving her a nickname like Pinky-Poo anyway. And Jean, you will be horrified to learn, has not only eaten sushi and raw oysters but has also had the occasion to sip a microglass of wine now and then, or have a glug or two of beer. (In preparation, of course, for immigration to France.) Yeah, we know, the alarmists say you shouldn’t. But it’s just too hard to get worked up about these things. And besides, it’s not like Jean’s smoking meth.

None of this is to say we’re not looking forward to the new child. Au contraire! The September day that Sasha’s little sister bursts forth from Jean’s womb (like something out of “Prometheus”?) will be a joyful day indeed, whatever we decide to call the little critter. (Maybe just Critter?) But the point is, we cannot fucking wait for that day to arrive, at least so we can have a couple of gin-and-tonics to celebrate.