Organs Watch – a first-of-its-kind program was launched on November 8, 1999 to identify human rights abuses surrounding the trafficking of organs by two professors from the University of California, Berkeley, and two professors from Columbia University Medical School. Located at Berkeley, the centre “will investigate reports and rumours of human rights abuses surrounding organ trafficking, identify hot spots where abuse may be occurring, and begin to define the line between ethical transplant surgery and practices that are exploitative or corrupt,” Berkeley said in a statement.

“Transplant surgery has entered a global market, and we need to keep a close watch on that. In the organs trade business, abuses creep in before you know it,” said Nancy Scheper-Hughes, one of the Berkeley professors who launched the centre. According to the Berkeley, the four founding professors will travel abroad to research the organ trade business. The Soros Foundation’s Open Society Institute has provided a two-year grant of $230,000, and Berkeley has provided $160,000.

The need for an organs watch centre was felt in 1997 when a report from the Bellagio Task Force on Securing Bodily Integrity for the Socially Disadvantaged in Transplant Surgery concluded that trade in human body parts was taking advantage of deprived people and putting them at risk.