Thoughts on Illegal Trade - Is ‘Globalization’ to Blame?
An original piece by Sparkie for an anti-globalization friend and you guys here at SA. I fear that 2H9 may be one of the few that appreciate this since some may view my stance as immoral, but such it is.
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The debate surrounding globalization and the illegal global economy is one that is divided into those who believe globalization has caused illegal markets to spread and those who are far more skeptical of its effect and argue that it is just a new name for an old practice. The illegal human organ market and counterfeit goods are two illicit markets that have been affected by the new opportunities long distance communication and integrated market economies offer. Nonetheless, globalization is only one of many factors that exacerbate illegal market growth (Naylor 5). The illegal organ trade is a recent phenomenon that began shortly after the technology, such as cyclosporine in 1972, was available (Hughes Global 196). Globalization has helped link various actors of this trade, the poor donors and the often wealthy recipients, but most of the illegal organ trade occurs domestically (208). Counterfeit goods, on the other hand, have a ancient history dating back thousands of years. Tim Phillips even goes so far as to call it “the second oldest trade in history” (Phillips 8). Globalization has taken this old trade and given it new opportunities that did not exist years ago. Even though a wider range of market access has come about, it is questionable whether globalization can take full responsibility for its proliferation. Both illegal trades, human organs and counterfeit goods, have further expanded for other reasons that must be taken into account. These factors include policies that create incentives and the culture of a region or state. Both of these trades have expanded in recent decades and while the task of curbing them may appear daunting I offer some recommendations for dealing with these issues. Cyclosporine, the transplant anti-rejection drug, was first discovered in 1972 and, more importantly, in 1983 the U.S. physician H. Barry Jacobs put together the first commercial market in organs (Hughes Global 196). Dr. Jacobs was responsible for setting up the International Kidney Exchange for the purpose of brokering kidneys from the third world, especially India. From the start, divisions in the trade were apparent – poor individuals were the target donor pool while wealthy recipients from the first world were the demand for organs, most frequently kidneys. As Scheper-Hughes points out, the illegal organ trade exacerbated old divides between the “rich North” and the “poor South,” while reiterating the first world dependency on the marginalized “other” for labor or other needs, in this case organs (Parts 34). Globalization has helped link the donor, recipient, and organ broker in a more efficient way with greater ease of travel and surgical expertise spreading across the globe. Even so, it is fallacious to point at globalization as the main variable influencing the expansion of these markets, especially when markets are more readily influenced by state policies and local culture.
Each country approaches the issue of the global organ trade from different policy perspectives. In some countries, it is even promoted and endorsed by the state. In the Philippines for example, doctors and hospitals openly promote and tolerate transplant tourism (Hughes Parts 43). Iran, an unusual case, has a government sponsored program that regulates the sale of kidneys from poor to rich (45). South Africa also has an interesting policy regarding organs. In 1983, the South Africa Human Tissue Act was passed, requiring an individual’s family members consent at the time of death for organ harvesting to occur (Hughes Global 205). The main loophole to the act allows the government to make a “reasonable” attempt to contact the family; a pointless task as many individual’s families do not own telephones. Brazil also took initiative creating policies to increase their supply of harvested organs. In February of 1997, Brazil passed a law that made all Brazilian adults universal organ donors upon death unless they officially declare a non-donor status (209). This new law makes it easier for Brazilians to get non-biologically related individuals to donate. Before 1997 courts were required to verify that the donor was in fact the recipient’s kin. The government in Brazil has facilitated recipient’s access to paid donors. China also makes an interesting case study seeing that the government increased crimes listed as capital punishment offenses for the explicit purpose of meeting the organ demand (196). Since then, increased international attention forced China to curb this practice. Overall, policies put in place by these governments made it easier for the illegal organ trade to flourish and probably did more or at least as much as globalization in facilitating recipient’s access to organs, especially international donors.
While policies are an important factor in the illicit global economy, the culture of the region or state plays just as significant a role. As Hughes points out, religious prohibitions can stimulate an organs market in a neighboring country (Global 191). For example, brain stem death was only recently accepted as a definition of death in Japan. Before this definition was seen as acceptable, Japanese recipients came to the US looking for organs. Religious views can stimulate an organ market within a country as well. For example, transplant tourism thrives in the Philippines and one reason behind the hospitals promoting it stems from the Catholicism of the Philippine people (Hughes Parts 52). Catholicism, which is practiced overwhelmingly in the Philippines, instructs adherents not to use the organs of a cadaver. Interestingly enough, whole families have been documented removing their kidneys, and see the act as one a good Samaritan would perform. In Israel, cadavers are seen as “gross” and the demand for live donor’s organs is culturally created as a result. It is not apparent that demand for human organs would cease to be stimulated if globalization had never occurred. As one can see, cultural and religious demands play a large role, and it is likely that the illegal trade would still have expanded. While globalization may help the organs travel from poor to rich across international terrain, there is no doubt that illegal trade would still have a wide supply and demand within countries or neighboring regions.
Counterfeiting, unlike the illegal human organ trade, did not need to wait for special technology to be invented for a market to take root. No doubt the advent of the internet, and spread of other technological innovations, have helped counterfeiting flourish, but there was no lack of counterfeit goods without this. One example of its long history dates back to 27 B.C. when the Guals knocked off wine stoppers in order to sell cheap wine for higher prices to the Romans (Phillips 7). Other modes of counterfeiting such as piracy came about with inventions such as the internet and benefited from the interdependency facilitated by these technologies. Globalization, as Tim Phillips notes, created world-wide super brands which people easily recognize and crave such as Prada or Gillette (25). Phillips argues the success of multinational corporations marketing themselves has contributed to the counterfeiting problem since it creates a global market to exploit. No doubt Phillip’s point is true, but it must not be taken as the end all be all of explanations. Policies and cultural factors play as much or even bigger a role in counterfeit goods as they do with human organs, and, combined with globalization, has allowed the illegal market in counterfeit goods to mushroom.
The first Intellectual Property laws in the U.S. were created by one of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, who was interested in promoting innovations and “liberal thought” (Phillips 13). Jefferson may be amazed to see how important these intellectual property laws have become with an ever increasing global economy. Western ideas of intellectual property were not the only thing to make its way on to the global stage, along with them came the outsourcing of capitalistic ideology as well. Many countries, in recent years, have scrambled to promote liberalized trade and Western norms in order to be a part of the World Trade Organization and a favored trading partner of the first world. In many parts of the third world, centrally planned economies existed or still do, and the related policies still resonate with their people today. China is one such example. Joining the WTO in 2001 after attempting to put in place stern anti-counterfeiting laws, China is struggling with having laws on paper but no enforcement capability in reality. As the General Manager of the CUIPPC commented “China has too many people…they don’t have stable work and they are not well educated. What do you expect them to do?”( 65). The reality of the problem is that China, even though the policies are there on paper, is limited in what it can do. Often, for example, it is hard to do raids of factories in China who make the counterfeit goods when the factory is the largest employer in a certain town.
China is not alone. Poland, another state with a history of a centrally planned economy, sees no need to have anything categorized as intellectual property – a by product of the old communist regime (Phillips 77). Other policies make it harder for governments to have a realistic effect and provide an incentive for individuals to enter the illicit counterfeit trade. First, in the third world there is not much political pressure to start looking for counterfeits (84). Not only are there higher priorities, such as murder and kidnapping, there are also financial incentives to ignore the issue. Customs, upon finding illegal counterfeit goods, is required to impound the goods and pay the cost of storing them (85). Developing countries who are unable to provide basic needs to their constituents are not interested in diverging economic resources to stopping a trade, that in many cases, is one of their only sources of income. In Russia, policies prohibit Customs from even going so far as seizing the counterfeit goods, and even if caught, the individual only has to pay the equivalent of a $19 fine ( for many in Russia this is substantial) (97). Furthermore, Moscow’s own educational department has been known to buy pirated Windows programs for its schools (157). Other countries, like Vietnam, can not even offer its people a legal alternative. An individual looking to buy a legitimate CD in Vietnam will never find one since they don’t exist there (113). The US’ own laws create incentives for individual’s to engage in counterfeiting. The US Digital Millennium Copyright Act only forces websites to be held accountable for counterfeit material on their websites only after they have been informed about the infringement (89). Obviously, this helps protect innocent website owner’s who are ignorant to the vast material on their website, but it also opens the doors to those who manipulate the law to their own advantage. Counterfeit pharmaceuticals are also entering the global market. In the U.S. and Europe, the supply chain is not controlled and drugs are packaged and repackaged many times before being sold (188). In the U.S. printing pharmaceutical packaging is not a crime, making it even easier for individual’s to counterfeit drugs (186). Some may also point to policies promoting liberalized trade borders, such as the EU, as a factor increasing the counterfeit trade. It is important not to exaggerate this point too much, since it is important to remember that open borders are not new and were the norm in the 19th century, a time when counterfeiting existed.
Cultural factors play a large role in the proliferation of the counterfeit trade as well. In Italy, counterfeiting has been internalized as the norm, and no stigma exists about producing “fakes” (Phillips 69). It is part of the national psyche as Phillips points out, and it is routinely the case that smaller companies can stay afloat in the market by counterfeiting the larger company’s products. In China, the cultural norm there is not one that emphasizes creativity as much as copying (59). A partial byproduct of the communist ideology where people’s innovations were arguably suppressed, it has now become the norm for many people and, in effect, has helped counterfeiting flourish there. There is also an overall attitude that people have, as Tim Phillips notes, that is not culturally specific to any country. The attitude concerns people wanting fake goods even if it is illegal and, therefore, not bothering to care that they are the main demand source for the counterfeit trade. This is a case in point why supply specific counter measures alone would never work – the demand is too large, too widespread, and efforts would need to address this concern in order to be effective.
The illicit global trade has, in general, benefited from the increasing spread of technology and information, as well as the interdependency of the global market, licit or illicit. Placing the blame wholly on globalization is fallacious and only causes further policies to be made that work to propagate the illegal trade instead of curbing it. Scheper-Hughes believes the key in stopping the illegal trade in organs does not lie in legalizing it (Global 197). This recommendation is out of touch with the reality of our situation. Hughes argues that allowing the market, by virtue of supply and demand, to set prices for organs would by nature of the practice take advantage of the desperately poor. She goes on to say that arguments of regulation are unfounded since oversight would be corrupted. This is exactly why we should legalize it and allow the market to “oversee” the trade. It is inconsistent to allow female eggs to be sold on the market, often at a hefty price, and often sold by females who are vulnerably poor. One could make the argument that their consent was not autonomous and they were coerced by their relative position in the market just like a poor individual who is willing to sell their kidney. It would be coercive of the state to prohibit someone from selling their own body parts, seeing that they own them. If a state is authoritarian then obviously it can make a claim that it is entitled to an individual’s body since property rights would presumably be non-existent. While I morally think such a situation would be wrong, the moral ache we feel is only that and not a foundation for claiming inalienable rights. Scheper-Hughes must remember, even though it is a controversial claim, people do not inherently have rights, the government makes them. If the state pushes liberal trade with property rights, then the individual should be free to sell their body. Counterfeit goods, unfortunately, may be harder to curb as long as there are desperately poor countries trying to keep afloat in a capitalistic economy that has pushed economic reform on them. What must truly be a priority for the US and others are pharmaceuticals. Often individuals can avoid getting on a plane or driving a car, and don’t need a fake Gucci bag, items which are all counterfeited, but they usually need medicine to keep them alive. In this regard Nigeria should be our role model, and like them we should begin to stamp our medicine with a special seal as they do (Phillips 210). Until we can have more of a control on our medicine supply chain, stamping the medicine with a special code, that for instance is never repeated twice, can be a start.
Works Cited
Naim, Moises. “The Five Global Wars”. Foreign Policy. Jan/Feb 2003. pp 29-38.
Naylor, R.T. Wages of Crime. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002.
Phillips, Tim. Knockoff: The Deadly Trade in Counterfeit Goods. London: Kogan Page, 2005.
Scheper – Highes, Nancy. “Parts Unknown”. Ethnography. Vol 5 (1). pp 29-73.
---. “The Global Traffic in Human Organs.” Current Anthropology. Vol 41 (4) 2000. pp 191-223.
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The debate surrounding globalization and the illegal global economy is one that is divided into those who believe globalization has caused illegal markets to spread and those who are far more skeptical of its effect and argue that it is just a new name for an old practice. The illegal human organ market and counterfeit goods are two illicit markets that have been affected by the new opportunities long distance communication and integrated market economies offer. Nonetheless, globalization is only one of many factors that exacerbate illegal market growth (Naylor 5). The illegal organ trade is a recent phenomenon that began shortly after the technology, such as cyclosporine in 1972, was available (Hughes Global 196). Globalization has helped link various actors of this trade, the poor donors and the often wealthy recipients, but most of the illegal organ trade occurs domestically (208). Counterfeit goods, on the other hand, have a ancient history dating back thousands of years. Tim Phillips even goes so far as to call it “the second oldest trade in history” (Phillips 8). Globalization has taken this old trade and given it new opportunities that did not exist years ago. Even though a wider range of market access has come about, it is questionable whether globalization can take full responsibility for its proliferation. Both illegal trades, human organs and counterfeit goods, have further expanded for other reasons that must be taken into account. These factors include policies that create incentives and the culture of a region or state. Both of these trades have expanded in recent decades and while the task of curbing them may appear daunting I offer some recommendations for dealing with these issues. Cyclosporine, the transplant anti-rejection drug, was first discovered in 1972 and, more importantly, in 1983 the U.S. physician H. Barry Jacobs put together the first commercial market in organs (Hughes Global 196). Dr. Jacobs was responsible for setting up the International Kidney Exchange for the purpose of brokering kidneys from the third world, especially India. From the start, divisions in the trade were apparent – poor individuals were the target donor pool while wealthy recipients from the first world were the demand for organs, most frequently kidneys. As Scheper-Hughes points out, the illegal organ trade exacerbated old divides between the “rich North” and the “poor South,” while reiterating the first world dependency on the marginalized “other” for labor or other needs, in this case organs (Parts 34). Globalization has helped link the donor, recipient, and organ broker in a more efficient way with greater ease of travel and surgical expertise spreading across the globe. Even so, it is fallacious to point at globalization as the main variable influencing the expansion of these markets, especially when markets are more readily influenced by state policies and local culture.
Each country approaches the issue of the global organ trade from different policy perspectives. In some countries, it is even promoted and endorsed by the state. In the Philippines for example, doctors and hospitals openly promote and tolerate transplant tourism (Hughes Parts 43). Iran, an unusual case, has a government sponsored program that regulates the sale of kidneys from poor to rich (45). South Africa also has an interesting policy regarding organs. In 1983, the South Africa Human Tissue Act was passed, requiring an individual’s family members consent at the time of death for organ harvesting to occur (Hughes Global 205). The main loophole to the act allows the government to make a “reasonable” attempt to contact the family; a pointless task as many individual’s families do not own telephones. Brazil also took initiative creating policies to increase their supply of harvested organs. In February of 1997, Brazil passed a law that made all Brazilian adults universal organ donors upon death unless they officially declare a non-donor status (209). This new law makes it easier for Brazilians to get non-biologically related individuals to donate. Before 1997 courts were required to verify that the donor was in fact the recipient’s kin. The government in Brazil has facilitated recipient’s access to paid donors. China also makes an interesting case study seeing that the government increased crimes listed as capital punishment offenses for the explicit purpose of meeting the organ demand (196). Since then, increased international attention forced China to curb this practice. Overall, policies put in place by these governments made it easier for the illegal organ trade to flourish and probably did more or at least as much as globalization in facilitating recipient’s access to organs, especially international donors.
While policies are an important factor in the illicit global economy, the culture of the region or state plays just as significant a role. As Hughes points out, religious prohibitions can stimulate an organs market in a neighboring country (Global 191). For example, brain stem death was only recently accepted as a definition of death in Japan. Before this definition was seen as acceptable, Japanese recipients came to the US looking for organs. Religious views can stimulate an organ market within a country as well. For example, transplant tourism thrives in the Philippines and one reason behind the hospitals promoting it stems from the Catholicism of the Philippine people (Hughes Parts 52). Catholicism, which is practiced overwhelmingly in the Philippines, instructs adherents not to use the organs of a cadaver. Interestingly enough, whole families have been documented removing their kidneys, and see the act as one a good Samaritan would perform. In Israel, cadavers are seen as “gross” and the demand for live donor’s organs is culturally created as a result. It is not apparent that demand for human organs would cease to be stimulated if globalization had never occurred. As one can see, cultural and religious demands play a large role, and it is likely that the illegal trade would still have expanded. While globalization may help the organs travel from poor to rich across international terrain, there is no doubt that illegal trade would still have a wide supply and demand within countries or neighboring regions.
Counterfeiting, unlike the illegal human organ trade, did not need to wait for special technology to be invented for a market to take root. No doubt the advent of the internet, and spread of other technological innovations, have helped counterfeiting flourish, but there was no lack of counterfeit goods without this. One example of its long history dates back to 27 B.C. when the Guals knocked off wine stoppers in order to sell cheap wine for higher prices to the Romans (Phillips 7). Other modes of counterfeiting such as piracy came about with inventions such as the internet and benefited from the interdependency facilitated by these technologies. Globalization, as Tim Phillips notes, created world-wide super brands which people easily recognize and crave such as Prada or Gillette (25). Phillips argues the success of multinational corporations marketing themselves has contributed to the counterfeiting problem since it creates a global market to exploit. No doubt Phillip’s point is true, but it must not be taken as the end all be all of explanations. Policies and cultural factors play as much or even bigger a role in counterfeit goods as they do with human organs, and, combined with globalization, has allowed the illegal market in counterfeit goods to mushroom.
The first Intellectual Property laws in the U.S. were created by one of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, who was interested in promoting innovations and “liberal thought” (Phillips 13). Jefferson may be amazed to see how important these intellectual property laws have become with an ever increasing global economy. Western ideas of intellectual property were not the only thing to make its way on to the global stage, along with them came the outsourcing of capitalistic ideology as well. Many countries, in recent years, have scrambled to promote liberalized trade and Western norms in order to be a part of the World Trade Organization and a favored trading partner of the first world. In many parts of the third world, centrally planned economies existed or still do, and the related policies still resonate with their people today. China is one such example. Joining the WTO in 2001 after attempting to put in place stern anti-counterfeiting laws, China is struggling with having laws on paper but no enforcement capability in reality. As the General Manager of the CUIPPC commented “China has too many people…they don’t have stable work and they are not well educated. What do you expect them to do?”( 65). The reality of the problem is that China, even though the policies are there on paper, is limited in what it can do. Often, for example, it is hard to do raids of factories in China who make the counterfeit goods when the factory is the largest employer in a certain town.
China is not alone. Poland, another state with a history of a centrally planned economy, sees no need to have anything categorized as intellectual property – a by product of the old communist regime (Phillips 77). Other policies make it harder for governments to have a realistic effect and provide an incentive for individuals to enter the illicit counterfeit trade. First, in the third world there is not much political pressure to start looking for counterfeits (84). Not only are there higher priorities, such as murder and kidnapping, there are also financial incentives to ignore the issue. Customs, upon finding illegal counterfeit goods, is required to impound the goods and pay the cost of storing them (85). Developing countries who are unable to provide basic needs to their constituents are not interested in diverging economic resources to stopping a trade, that in many cases, is one of their only sources of income. In Russia, policies prohibit Customs from even going so far as seizing the counterfeit goods, and even if caught, the individual only has to pay the equivalent of a $19 fine ( for many in Russia this is substantial) (97). Furthermore, Moscow’s own educational department has been known to buy pirated Windows programs for its schools (157). Other countries, like Vietnam, can not even offer its people a legal alternative. An individual looking to buy a legitimate CD in Vietnam will never find one since they don’t exist there (113). The US’ own laws create incentives for individual’s to engage in counterfeiting. The US Digital Millennium Copyright Act only forces websites to be held accountable for counterfeit material on their websites only after they have been informed about the infringement (89). Obviously, this helps protect innocent website owner’s who are ignorant to the vast material on their website, but it also opens the doors to those who manipulate the law to their own advantage. Counterfeit pharmaceuticals are also entering the global market. In the U.S. and Europe, the supply chain is not controlled and drugs are packaged and repackaged many times before being sold (188). In the U.S. printing pharmaceutical packaging is not a crime, making it even easier for individual’s to counterfeit drugs (186). Some may also point to policies promoting liberalized trade borders, such as the EU, as a factor increasing the counterfeit trade. It is important not to exaggerate this point too much, since it is important to remember that open borders are not new and were the norm in the 19th century, a time when counterfeiting existed.
Cultural factors play a large role in the proliferation of the counterfeit trade as well. In Italy, counterfeiting has been internalized as the norm, and no stigma exists about producing “fakes” (Phillips 69). It is part of the national psyche as Phillips points out, and it is routinely the case that smaller companies can stay afloat in the market by counterfeiting the larger company’s products. In China, the cultural norm there is not one that emphasizes creativity as much as copying (59). A partial byproduct of the communist ideology where people’s innovations were arguably suppressed, it has now become the norm for many people and, in effect, has helped counterfeiting flourish there. There is also an overall attitude that people have, as Tim Phillips notes, that is not culturally specific to any country. The attitude concerns people wanting fake goods even if it is illegal and, therefore, not bothering to care that they are the main demand source for the counterfeit trade. This is a case in point why supply specific counter measures alone would never work – the demand is too large, too widespread, and efforts would need to address this concern in order to be effective.
The illicit global trade has, in general, benefited from the increasing spread of technology and information, as well as the interdependency of the global market, licit or illicit. Placing the blame wholly on globalization is fallacious and only causes further policies to be made that work to propagate the illegal trade instead of curbing it. Scheper-Hughes believes the key in stopping the illegal trade in organs does not lie in legalizing it (Global 197). This recommendation is out of touch with the reality of our situation. Hughes argues that allowing the market, by virtue of supply and demand, to set prices for organs would by nature of the practice take advantage of the desperately poor. She goes on to say that arguments of regulation are unfounded since oversight would be corrupted. This is exactly why we should legalize it and allow the market to “oversee” the trade. It is inconsistent to allow female eggs to be sold on the market, often at a hefty price, and often sold by females who are vulnerably poor. One could make the argument that their consent was not autonomous and they were coerced by their relative position in the market just like a poor individual who is willing to sell their kidney. It would be coercive of the state to prohibit someone from selling their own body parts, seeing that they own them. If a state is authoritarian then obviously it can make a claim that it is entitled to an individual’s body since property rights would presumably be non-existent. While I morally think such a situation would be wrong, the moral ache we feel is only that and not a foundation for claiming inalienable rights. Scheper-Hughes must remember, even though it is a controversial claim, people do not inherently have rights, the government makes them. If the state pushes liberal trade with property rights, then the individual should be free to sell their body. Counterfeit goods, unfortunately, may be harder to curb as long as there are desperately poor countries trying to keep afloat in a capitalistic economy that has pushed economic reform on them. What must truly be a priority for the US and others are pharmaceuticals. Often individuals can avoid getting on a plane or driving a car, and don’t need a fake Gucci bag, items which are all counterfeited, but they usually need medicine to keep them alive. In this regard Nigeria should be our role model, and like them we should begin to stamp our medicine with a special seal as they do (Phillips 210). Until we can have more of a control on our medicine supply chain, stamping the medicine with a special code, that for instance is never repeated twice, can be a start.
Works Cited
Naim, Moises. “The Five Global Wars”. Foreign Policy. Jan/Feb 2003. pp 29-38.
Naylor, R.T. Wages of Crime. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002.
Phillips, Tim. Knockoff: The Deadly Trade in Counterfeit Goods. London: Kogan Page, 2005.
Scheper – Highes, Nancy. “Parts Unknown”. Ethnography. Vol 5 (1). pp 29-73.
---. “The Global Traffic in Human Organs.” Current Anthropology. Vol 41 (4) 2000. pp 191-223.
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